The Art of Sanctuary
by starry19
Summary: NOW COMPLETE "But now he had to choose - love or revenge? Darkness or light? Loyalty to his past or hope for his future? And with every moment that ticked by, someone got closer to making that decision for him, only they weren't faced with his options. All they had to work with was life or death."
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Holy season finale, Batman! Almost before the episode was over, I knew this was going to be a multichapter. Way too much to fit into a single tag, and so much more I want to explore!So...here we go. No idea how long this is going to be; we shall just see where the story takes us!

In other news, Donnamour and I are teaming up for a story (at this very moment, in fact), so be on the look out for that very, very soon. It's actually a Jane/Angela origin fic, and we're both excited for it. I know many of you are exclusive fans of Jane/Lisbon, but the Jane you know and love doesn't exist without Angela, so I'm asking you to give it a shot. Pretty please? I'm making puppy dog eyes right now!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter One**

He was coming for Lisbon.

There was no doubt in his mind now.

Even if the threat hadn't been explicitly expressed, the message was as plain as the nose on his face, and that was pretty damn plain, if he was being honest.

_I'm going to kill the happy memory that you never told anyone._

Well, that was already done. Eileen Barlow was dead and gone, and with her, one of the few purely blissful reminiscences of childhood.

The rest of the letter promised a return to killing, but there was something deeply implicit those words, read in Lorelei's quiet voice. It wasn't going to be random victims this time. They were going to be people that meant something to him.

And the one that meant the most of all was currently sitting in front of him, distinctly worried expression on her face.

He wondered if she'd made the connection yet, that she had found herself in the crosshairs that he'd tried so hard to aim away from her.

If she hadn't, he didn't want to be the one to tell her. Stupid, perhaps, but he didn't want to frighten her. She had quite enough on her mind at the moment. The pictures scattered across the keyboard of the laptop he'd filched from her office stared blankly upwards.

One of them had written that message.

One of them had killed his family.

One of them had just promised to start killing again.

Yes, definitely enough to be getting on with.

This didn't mean he was going to do nothing, naturally. He had the list narrowed down; now his job was going to be making sure she would be as safe as he could make her.

"What do we do?" Lisbon finally asked, green eyes still wide and a little glassy.

His mouth was set in a straight line, fingers still dusted with the remnants of the shattered disc. "I don't know," he replied, hating how uncertain he sounded, how helpless. "He was one step ahead again."

Lisbon looked like she wanted to run her hands over her face, but the cast prevented it. He made a detached mental note to ask her again how her injury had happened._ I tripped._ Sure she did.

"There'a connection I'm missing somewhere," he muttered. "There's a reason he knows this information, a reason he knows all of the names on my list. I need to know what it is."

Though she tried to hide it, he saw a shiver chase down her spine.

"You never told anyone about Eileen Barlow?" Lisbon verified. Again.

He shook his head. "No one." That was perhaps the most troubling aspect of all of this - _how_ did he know?

Despite whatever Lisbon said, there were still no such thing as psychics. There was a logical answer out there somewhere.

More things to add to his list of unanswered questions.

Just for something to do, Lisbon shut the lid on the laptop. He stared out the window, willing the answers to come to him. Maybe he should shut himself away for another week.

Of course, that would mean he couldn't keep an eye on Lisbon, and that wasn't an option he was going to consider.

That was going to be his game plan for the foreseeable future - one eye on Red John, one eye on Lisbon. At all times, if possible.

Distractedly, he flopped down on the makeshift bed, wrinkling his jacket further.

They were both silent, minds awash with thoughts that were sometimes the same, sometimes very different.

In fact, there was another conversation he occasionally was thinking of, one they had never had. One that he had stopped them from having, twice now. Once in a warehouse in Las Vegas, once in the Chevy a day ago.

She was almost at her breaking point as far as her feelings for him went now. She was ready to move on them, especially since Sean Barlow had so casually pointed them out.

And he wasn't stupid enough to think that she had ever believed him when he claimed to not remember his declaration.

So.

They were in love.

And they both knew it.

To Lisbon, that was all there was to it. What was the point of waiting around any longer? He knew very well that she had tucked her feelings for him away for almost a decade now, probably far too scared to act until she was certain of his affection. No one liked to put themselves out there in a potentially heart-breaking situation until they were sure of what the outcome was going to be, and Lisbon was no exception.

This latest twist with Red John was going to put a proverbial wrench in her plans, but not indefinitely. And as much as he had dreamed of this, he wasn't sure he could be in a relationship with her when he felt her life was markedly in danger, especially if his failure to be smart enough to catch a serial killer was the cause of it.

Being with her now would likely move her up the ladder of happy memories, make her an even more appealing target than she already was. But perhaps that was a stupid thought - she was already his only bright spot in a decade of darkness. It didn't take a genius to figure that out.

He closed his eyes with force, cursing himself for not being smart enough to keep his distance from Lisbon. That wasn't entirely true, though. He knew he should stay away, that he should stop letting her in, stop trying to learn her secrets, stop trusting her with his thoughts. He hadn't been strong enough, that was all.

"When do you think he's going to start again?" she asked once.

"Killing people?" He shrugged. "Impossible to say. Soon, I imagine, but he'll wait long enough that we've all about gone crazy from waiting." Frowning, he rethought his words. "That _I'll_ have gone crazy," he amended. "You have to act like you don't know what's coming. The less he thinks you know about this, the better."

Without looking, he knew what expression she was wearing. Annoyed, exasperated, defiant. "Trust me, Lisbon. You'll be safer that way."

"Jane, I can take care of myself," she protested, just as he'd expected.

"Sure," he replied. "I left you alone for a week and you managed to break a bone, probably trying to take down a suspect that Rigsby and Cho would have had difficulty with. Am I close?"

Her guilty silence was all the answer he needed.

"Teresa," he finally said, "I think the next round of victims are going to be connected to me in one way or another. Like he said, my happy memories. You fall into that category, more than anyone else alive. I need you to be as safe as you possibly can be."

Wrenching his eyes open, he met her gaze, imploring._ Please._

There was a moment where she thought through the implications of his words, both the affection and the fear they inspired. Eventually, she nodded. "I'll do my best."

In that moment, he knew it would never be enough. No precautions he took would be enough.

She had a target etched on her back.

Time had never seemed so important.

For ten years, he hadn't had a schedule. He would have been content to hunt Red John for the rest of his life if that's what it would have taken. Now, however, it was almost as if he could feel every tick of the second hand in his heart.

Every instant that passed was one closer to the time when Red John would make his move.

Jane wasn't a particularly violent man, prone to outbursts, but he wanted to scream, wanted to slam his fists into the wall until some of this absolute rage and shock and fright subsided.

"What's our next move?" she asked, and he understood her use of the word _our._ She was letting him know that she had no intention of walking this path alone, of letting him lock her out.

He sighed. "We start going down the suspect list. The next way to eliminate the candidates is to figure out who could have been at Elliston Farm the summer that Red John got his start."

"Well, getting information from Visualize will just be a piece of cake," she muttered, and he heard the sarcasm. "They're always so cooperative."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, he smiled. "I can be very charming, Lisbon."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm afraid your charms are probably quite useless against a brain-washing cult. Besides, they all think you're a jackass." Her tone sounded a bit more chipper.

He snorted, then sat up. The sun was starting to go down, the rays beginning to slant across the rough floor.

Lisbon was staring at his suspect list again, starting at one end and working her way methodically to the other. He crossed the room and peered over her shoulder, though each of those names and images were permanently burned into his mind.

"What does your gut say?" she asked quietly.

He considered. "Not Stiles," he said. "I think he's too old. But I think he has a good idea of who Red John is. He'll never tell, though. He likes having that knowledge all to himself."

Lisbon swept the small picture aside. "Six is fewer than seven," she told him, determinedly hopeful. She was thinking about something else, though, he could tell, though he honestly wasn't sure what it was.

Her phone rang, and he saw Cho's number on the caller id screen. He took the brief moment before she answered to hope that Red John's killing spree hadn't begun already. It would be too much. He needed at least a few days to recuperate, to not see a bloody and mangled body staring up at him with wide, vacant eyes.

"Great, thanks," Lisbon was saying into the speaker. "Do this yourself," she added. "Don't get anyone but the team involved."

She disconnected the call, then turned to face him. "We got the all-clear to start going through Miriam Gottelieb's records."

He nodded his understanding. It was beyond unlikely that they would find something that linked her to anyone on his list - Red John was far too careful for that sort of thing - but maybe the stars were aligned in some once in a century position and they would get lucky.

When Lisbon stood, it looked for a moment like her shoulders slumped a bit. He couldn't blame her; this new knowledge was nothing but a burden. One more secret of his that she had to keep. This one was more important though - her life was probably riding on it, too, but he understood the onus of it very well.

Ignorance really was bliss, and he was sorry for taking some of that away from her.

He followed her out, laptop tucked under one arm, the other almost around her, like he had done earlier.

It was't an unusual thing for him to touch her back, to guide her. When she had walked into the attic earlier, though, demanding to know what was on the disc, so soon after he'd come to the chilling conclusion that there was another list out there with her name on it, he'd felt the near-compulsion to keep her close. To keep her safe under his arm, even if it was just for a few steps.

By the time they reached her office, he had dropped his hand, though he was still walking closer than usual by her side. She took her usual spot behind the desk and he sat in front of her as he had been doing lately. It was closer than the couch, though decidedly less nap-friendly.

She left when it was still daylight, something he was grateful for. Hard to hide in the shadows when the sun insisted on shining.

He stayed in her office, thinking. He needed a plan, a method. The men on the list, the men that were potentially California's most notorious serial killer...he worked with them, some of them frequently.

Bertram had saved gotten him out of trouble once or twice. He'd taught the older man how to fix his poker tell. Of everyone on the list, Jane hoped it wasn't Bertram.

Of course, there wasn't anyone he really hoped it _was._ It was beyond unsettling, thinking that he had actually interacted with the man that had taken his family away in a way that hadn't ended with the son of a bitch dead.

What if it was Haffner? Or Kirkland? Lisbon had been alone with both men on more than one occasion. A shiver chased down his spine.

Standing abruptly, he decided to give into another compulsion. Fishing his keys out of his pocket, he made his way to the parking lot, starting the Citroen in the gathering dusk.

Without thinking, he did what his heart told him, taking the turns that brought him to Lisbon's apartment. The lights were on, and he could very clearly see her shadow in the kitchen. She was...dancing.

He smiled, then felt a bit like a voyeur.

Maybe this was how she was going to deal with the stress of the day - drink a few beers, blast the Spice Girls, and have a dance-off on her linoleum. Everyone coped in their own way, he supposed. His just happened to be watching the woman he loved through her window.

Which was definitely normal.

Slightly disgusted with himself, he got out of the car.

She opened the door after a brief pause, one in which she probably hurriedly shoved her iPod into a drawer.

"Hi," she said, a bit breathlessly. Her cheeks were flushed.

"Hi," he replied, smiling.

She stood aside to let him in, but he didn't move.

"What's up?" she asked, concerned now. He didn't show up at her place unless something was going on, and even then, it was rare.

"Just being paranoid," he admitted, unsure of how she would react.

It took her a second to work out what he was referring to, and the glow receded from her cheeks. He was checking to make sure she was alive. It was hard to stay in good spirits after something like that.

"Every door and window has been checked," she informed him, "and I fully intend on sleeping with a gun tonight."

It didn't make him feel better, not really, but the image of her snuggled up with a Glock made him chuckle.

"Good," he told her. "I don't think you have anything to worry about right off the bat, but in this case, much better safe than sorry." He meant it - killing Lisbon would be the crowning jewel for Red John at this stage of the game, a masterpiece. He wasn't about to rush it, to claim his grand prize without some sort of build up. Besides, the man enjoyed the idea of Jane being terrified for her safety for a while. Sort of the _cherry on top_ mentality.

Lisbon chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. "What did he mean, _until I catch you_? Is he coming after you, too?" The idea horrified her, he could see that easily.

He shrugged, trying to keep her calm. "Eventually, probably," he told her honestly. "But he'll want to watch me suffer for a while, to force me to acknowledge that I can't beat him, see how I react every time he takes another life."

She had goosebumps now, and he knew they weren't from the temperature. With a sigh, he stepped forward and curled his hands around her upper arms, leaning down to press his lips softly to her forehead.

"It's awful, I know," he said, "but I think you and I are both going to survive this night."

When she looked up at him, her smile was a touch watery. "What about tomorrow night?"

"We'll worry about that tomorrow night," he said firmly.

He left then, pausing to show her his brave face, the one that was meant to reassure her. Hell, he even thought his words were true. It was too early in the hunt for the major players to start falling. And Red John was nothing if not a consummate showman.

It didn't stop him from spending the majority of the night driving around the city, passing by Lisbon's apartment every hour or so, sometimes more frequently when he gave into the paranoia.

The next day was quiet, and he slept on the couch in her office as she worked.

That night followed the pattern of the one before. Lisbon left early, he tried to make sure she stayed alive.

Two very long, very edgy days later, they got the call.

He felt the familiar surge of adrenaline, the thrum of his pulse, the sinking feeling that accompanied all of these all-too-common traits.

Red John had taken another victim.

The game was beginning.

And as he met Lisbon's eyes, he knew that his only option was to win.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:** Thanks so much for all of your support, everyone! Hopefully, I can still reply to everyone's reviews, but I'm insanely busy right now, what with the end of the school year starting to wrap up, and, you know, being in the middle of another story with Donna. I promise to try, though!

A big thank you and kudos to Charming for giving me a wonderful idea that I'm running with.

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Two**

It was early in the work day when the call came in from the AG's office. The morning still had a sort of clear, pure feeling to it, complete with gorgeous sunshine and promising temperature. It was the sort of atmosphere that made one feel lighthearted and optimistic.

Of course, it wound up being total nonsense. Just another reason why she shouldn't trust anything.

Jane was already in her office when she arrived, the shadows under his eyes looking almost bruised. He had gone almost a full week without sleeping, finally giving in just a few days ago. It was obvious now that he still wasn't sleeping, though what he did with the dark hours of the night, she wasn't entirely sure.

He'd at least shaved, attempted to tame his hair. The gray pinstriped suit looked fresh, crisp, so she had a feeling he was at least going back to his hotel room for a few hours. The CBI didn't have the nicest locker room facilities in the world, and not even Patrick Jane could look totally put-together after using them.

There was a cup of gourmet coffee sitting on her desk, the paper wrapper telling her that he had gotten it from the cart on the rooftop.

"Morning, Lisbon," he said in his normal cheerful tone. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

"Hi," she replied, shrugging out of her blazer as a concession to the weather. She took an experimental sip of her coffee, though she knew there was no reason to be cautious. Jane sometimes seemed to know her tastes better than she did. "Thanks," she added, raising her cup towards him in salute.

"You're very welcome," he told her.

She sat at her desk, fired up her computer, and attempted to get a few housekeeping items taken care of. The past few days, she had been rather distracted, what with the implicit threat towards her life and the constant, burdening knowledge that it was only a matter of time before Red John took another victim.

It really was no wonder that she was a little behind on paperwork. At least their new press secretary wasn't as persistently annoying as Brenda had been. She let herself smile just a touch in remembrance. All of this was just proof that sometimes people got what they deserved. And when they did, you couldn't help but cheer for karma.

However, she was barely through her first set of duplicate forms when the phone rang. Calls to her desk usually meant new crimes, and she sighed, feeling her shoulders set in the way they always did before a new case.

The woman on the other end, Carla Somebody from the AG's office, told her without preemption that they had just gotten a call from Malibu PD, from a very green officer, who was quite convinced they had another Red John murder on their hands.

After she hung up, she allowed herself perhaps five seconds of sheer dread. Malibu. Of all of the places she didn't want to have a Red John murder, the small costal city was definitely near the top of the list. In fact, the only places above it were the apartments of her team members.

Red John was bad enough, but dragging Jane back to where his worst nightmares had happened was just icing on the proverbial cake of torture.

When she raised her eyes, he was looking at her, and she recognized the expression. "Is it him?" he asked, even though he already knew.

She nodded. "The Malibu police called."

His posture changed slightly, became sharper. "Malibu." For just a moment, she tried to figure out what he was thinking, but realized it was going to be an entirely futile effort on her behalf.

He stood, his half-empty teacup rattling in its saucer as he deposited it on the table beside her couch. "It's a long drive," he noted flatly. "We'd better get going."

A half hour later, the team was loaded up in their customary vehicles, ready to make the nearly eight hour trip. She had requested that everyone come this time, which had led to Grace carting several expensive-looking pieces of electronic equipment down to the parking lot.

For several various reasons, she had decided that she would much rather have her team together for this. Given the distance, it would probably be easier to investigate if they had all hands on deck.

And, she admitted to herself as they turned onto the street that ran parallel to the CBI, it made her feel better if they were all together. Strength in numbers wasn't just a saying, and given Red John's usual M.O. of attacking a victim when they were alone, it simply made sense.

Jane had been entirely silent since he walked out of her office, and even now, leaning slightly into the car door, his posture screamed to be left alone.

So she kept to herself. It wasn't like she didn't have enough to think about.

Sean Barlow had creepily and accurately announced her feelings towards Jane not a week ago, and she was still reeling from the possible implications. Yes, she was fairly certain that Jane knew anyway, but it was most definitely _not_ how she imagined him hearing the words for the first time.

And, while she was thinking of words, it did disturb her a touch that Lorelei Martins had said nearly the same thing to Jane, all those months ago, as she covertly listened in to their interview.

_You're a little bit in love with her._

_A little in love with him, eh?_

There was a very good chance that it was a simple coincidence - it wasn't an unusual phrase or combination of words, after all. It was just that, when they were dealing with Red John, there was very little that was ever coincidence.

However, she figured _that_ was almost a silly thing to be worrying about. Almost. The point here was that Jane now officially knew how she felt. She hadn't bothered denying it, not wanting to draw any more attention to her feelings, hoping Barlow would just let it go. And then Jane had jumped in, trying to deflect the attention away from her.

Her knight in shining armor, and all of that.

God, could that have been any more awkward? She doubted it.

And then, to top the day off, she'd attempted to bring the topic up again, only to have Jane turn it into another direction.

He really, really didn't want to talk about their relationship. He'd made that beyond clear, both a few days ago and when she had summoned the courage to ask him about his words in Las Vegas, now almost a year ago.

There were a few reasons she could think of for that - one, maybe he knew that he felt different than she did and was trying to spare her the pain. Two, and this was what she was hoping for, he was simply afraid of what admitting feelings would mean, what unintended consequences it would have.

For there was no doubt that there would be consequences.

His comment that she was his happy memory had stuck with her, however, gone straight to her heart. She had never put it in those terms before, but she supposed the opposite was true as well. When she looked back at the past nine years of her life, it was the moments with Jane that stuck out. Nearly every wonderful or amazing thing that had happened either featured him or had him in the background.

She was forty now. Almost a quarter of her life had been devoted to Patrick Jane and his cause. It was a little bit of a strange thought.

They all stopped for lunch around the halfway point of their journey, mostly at Rigsby's insistence. Apparently, the poor man was dying of starvation. She mainly thought Grace and Cho had just gotten tired of listening to him complain or eat his way through all of their snacks.

Jane did speak a little during their meal, a few teasing comments directed at Grace, a mention that Rigsby had ordered enough side dishes to feed an entire family in Africa for week. He sat on her left side, next to the window, and though the chairs were wedged together closely, made no attempt to move them.

She didn't know if it was his way of apologizing for his silence or if he simply just wanted to be near her, and she really didn't care either way.

He offered to drive the rest of the way, and while that was normally something she wanted to avoid, eight hours really was a long time behind the wheel, and if driving made him feel better, so be it.

With something resembling his usual cheeky grin, he set the cruise about three miles an hour over what she would have done, just because he knew it would annoy her.

"I wonder if the timing of this murder will eliminate anyone from your suspect list," she mused once, staring out the window at the scenery.

"It's a possibility," he allowed, "though I think Red John probably picked a time when all seven suspects were still viable. He doesn't want to give it away that soon. I mean, I'll certainly check, but I wouldn't be surprised if this murder got us no closer to the truth."

She turned her eyes back to him, noting his grip on the wheel was rather tight.

"I'm trying to guess who it is," he told her eventually. "Who the victim is. Someone I know, obviously, someone connected to me." His expression was very thoughtful. "I don't have family in Malibu, and really, we didn't have a great deal of friends."

"No?" she asked. "Minor celebrity that you were, I figured people would be lining up to be your best friend."

He smiled, and there was an edge to it. "True enough, but the whole pretending to be a psychic thing didn't exactly lend itself to many deep friendships. It's hard to be close to someone you constantly have to lie to. My wife definitely had more real friends than I did, but I didn't really have much to do with them."

She chewed that information over for a while. He was right, obviously, and it made her even more sad to think of what he had lost. There wasn't anyone else for him - just his wife and daughter. They had quite literally been his whole world, taken away in one fell swoop.

The false friends he had mentioned had probably run as fast as they could in the other direction. Jane had been totally alone, at least until he walked into the CBI offices and walked out with what would become his surrogate family.

She took another moment to be grateful that she was the agent in charge of the Red John case. Jane had needed someone, and her compassionate nature made her take him on. Imagine if it had been Bosco, or one of the other countless people in the building.

No, Jane had needed _her._ She liked to think that sometimes he still did.

As they got closer to Malibu, their conversation faded out, the lines on Jane's face becoming a little more set. Although this place surely held a great deal of good memories for him, they were all overshadowed by the dark knowledge of what had happened here.

"What's the address?" he asked as they entered the city limits.

She checked her phone before rattling it off.

"I think I know where that is, at least generally." His eyes never left the road in front of him. "Not a bad neighborhood, by any means."

There was a tiny frown in between his brows, and she knew he was frantically trying to make the connection, to figure out who their victim was. Personally, she was almost terrified to know.

After a certain amount of wrong turns, they had the flashing lights of police vehicles to lead them to their destination.

Jane hadn't been mistaken - the neighborhood was nice. All newer houses, well maintained lawns up and down the quiet street. It was the sort of place that she could've seen herself living, kids running around in the backyard.

But, of course, that life path hadn't presented itself.

Jane was the first out of the vehicle, moving very deliberately. She kept one eye on him as she talked to the officers on scene.

"Do we have an ID?" she asked almost immediately.

"Mary Iverson," the detective read from his notes. "Early fifties, just retired. She was a kindergarten teacher at one of the local elementary schools in town for decades."

Lisbon got an eerie feeling.

Nodding her thanks, she ducked under the yellow crime tape and followed the trail of activity to the bedroom at the end of the hall.

A plastic sheet covered the body, the blood evident even from where she stood. On the wall behind the queen-sized bed, the expected smiling face leered at them.

Jane was standing slightly off to the side, hands shoved in his pockets.

When the room was empty, save the two of them, he turned to look at her fully.

"She was Charlotte's kindergarten teacher," he whispered, although she had already come to that unhappy conclusion.

"Any idea why Red John picked her?" she asked quietly.

Jane glanced over the room with unseeing eyes. "She was...one of the first people that really made me feel like I was doing a good job as a parent."

Lisbon furrowed her brow. "How's that?"

"When you have a child," he started, and she suddenly knew he was a decade away, "you really have no idea what you're doing. You try all of these different things, the best things you can think of, but you're still terrified that you've done everything wrong and you've wrecked your child's future." His lips quirked slightly.

"When we first met Mary, I think it was some back-to-school night. We introduced Charlotte to her, and Mary told us that it was very obvious she came from a loving home with caring parents." He paused. "She made it sound like it was the most important thing in the world, the best thing she could possibly wish for. Not that Charlotte knew the alphabet or could write her name, but just that she was loved unconditionally."

There was a moment where Lisbon would have considered reaching for his hand or even giving him a hug, but his posture changed again, and she stayed where she was.

"It's a gratifying thing, hearing from a total stranger that you're doing the best for you child, especially after the upbringing I had. We were about as far from the ideal as you could be, trust me, and I guess I was just always worried that I wasn't going to be capable of doing any better." His eyes were almost glossy, and she wasn't sure he even remembered that she was in the room. Her heart hurt.

The arrival of Cho and Rigsby snapped him out of his reverie, and he very simply told the other two men that this was definitely Red John. Clearly, he meant to keep his connection with the victim to himself.

Like every Red John crime scene, there wasn't much to see. There were no phone numbers written on the wall this time, nothing other than what they expected to find.

The Malibu PD had kindly set up a headquarters of a sort for them in their main station. Lisbon suspected the unusual amount of cooperation was because most of them still remembered the Jane murders, and they wanted nothing to do with the reemergence of the man who had done it.

There wasn't much daylight left by the time they had unloaded their gear, and with the long journey, she instructed the team to call it a night.

The hotel was about a carbon copy of most places they stayed in on the road. Small, reasonably clean, in need of updating. She perused the delivery menus on the nightstand, wondering if Jane could recommend anything to her.

And speaking of Jane...

From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blonde curls pass by the window. Her heart gave a funny beat before she realized he wasn't stopping at her door. A moment or two later, she heard the engine of the Chevy start. Peering through the streaked glass, she saw it head out of the parking lot and turn south.

Though it worried her, she decided to leave him on his own, even though her fingers were unconsciously bringing up his contact information on her phone already.

He would be fine, she reassured herself. It wasn't like he was in the middle of a strange city.

After ordering from some Italian place, which she was sure would have been delicious under normal circumstances, she took to pacing up and down the faded carpet, practically wringing her hands.

The truth was, she was very definitely worried about him. Red John was always bad, but being here was worse.

And then, like a bolt of lighting, she knew where he was.

The yellow pages gave her the name of a cab company. Fifteen minutes later, she was climbing in, wondering why she felt so compelled to go to Jane tonight.

The beach house was dark, but that was expected. The Chevy was parked in the driveway, and she breathed a sigh of relief for just a moment. She had no idea how he was going to react to her presence. The last time she had been here, it had been to pull him out of his fugue state. The place hadn't improved at all since then.

She climbed the steps silently, but the front door was locked. Frowning again, she started to make her way around the side of the house, following the wooden planks that wound down to the beach.

Just as she was going to attempt to slide the glass kitchen door open, she saw him.

He was lying on the beach, well-up from the water, head pillowed on his arms. In the moonlight, she could see his shoes and jacket tossed carelessly beside him.

Slowly, she picked a path to where he was, then carefully sat beside him, legs stretched out in front of her.

"Good evening, Lisbon," he said quietly. "I didn't think you'd come out here."

His tone was unreadable. "Do you want me to leave?" she asked softly.

He shook his head. "No. Stay."

She had no idea how long they were silent, just watching the waves crash ahead of them. "Is it awful, being back here?" she asked abruptly, but just above a whisper.

Unexpectedly, he shifted, resting his head on her thigh. Without thinking about it, she gently stroked his curls, the smoothness of the strands at odds with the coarse sand that clung to them.

"It's not so bad right now," he murmured. He curled closer, one arm going around her waist.

They were quiet again, words seemingly too much for now. She watched high tide come and go, still utterly unwilling to move. Once, she looked down and found that his eyes were closed.

It was an unexpected place to have such a moment, and yet, that was precisely what had happened.

Eventually, he stood, pulling her up along side him. He kept her hand as they walked back to the car, pausing to gather his discarded shoes and coat, then driving back to the city itself.

No one spoke until they had reached the door of her hotel room. "Sleep well," he murmured, offering her a warm smile, full of undertones and affection.

"You, too," she replied, fingers curling around the metal doorknob.

Like he had done a few days ago, he leaned in and softly kissed her cheek. He was closer to her lips this time, something she was quite sure was intentional, but still far enough away to be able to claim innocence.

And then he was gone, throwing her one last indecipherable look over his shoulder before he disappeared into his own room.

She showered, then lay on her lumpy mattress, feeling decidedly bereft. She missed the sand under her toes, and Jane's warmth draped across her.

Closing her eyes determinedly, she sought to remember exactly how _that_ felt. Sighing, she rolled to her side and wrapped her arms around herself.

A poor substitute for what she really wanted if she'd ever known one, but some things couldn't be helped.

At least not yet.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** Thanks to everyone who reviewed chapter two! I'm going to throw out a big, blanket response instead of individual ones this time, but hopefully I'll have time over the weekend for chapter three reviews!

I've also decided Season 6 needs to start in July. No, not start filming, but start airing. Because I need it. Is it too early to make a wish list for it yet? No?

Also, if you haven't done so, please go check out "Boy Wonder." Donna and I are co-authors, and we're really having a ton of fun with it. Like the summary says, you won't be sorry!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Three**

Sleep was in short supply that night. It wasn't very surprising, but he had been quite deprived of it lately. The half hour or so he'd drifted off, head in Lisbon's lap, her hands stroking absently through his hair, was the most peaceful he'd felt in a week.

He wondered if she would object if he knocked on her door and begged for space in her bed. Just to sleep, just to be close enough that he could smell her perfume, feel the warmth of her body. To be in the arms he knew would always be open for him.

It was sometimes shocking, the effect that knowledge had. No, he might not usually take her up on her unspoken offers, but just to know she was willing had gotten him through some dark days.

Of course, he also knew very well that it was too soon for such things.

Tonight had been a step closer together for them, clinging to the other in the midst of what was going to turn quickly into a battle.

But there were rules that had to be observed, lines that had to be walked for a while longer.

So he sat up and watched the sun rise, wondering if Lisbon, at least, was managing to get some rest.

The early morning light made it difficult to remember that he was in this place because of some horrific murder. Mary Iverson had definitely been a blow.

She hadn't crossed his mind in a decade. When he had been thinking about who the next victim could be, she wouldn't have made his top 100 list. Hell, if he was being honest, she wouldn't have made any list because he wouldn't have thought about her at all.

It was unsettling, and he wondered who would be next. So hard to predict, especially since he couldn't be sure who the potential pool even consisted of.

Well, other than Lisbon, of course.

Reflexively, he peered out the window towards her door. He had been watching it on and off for what remained of the night, and he was reasonably certain that she was perfectly fine. It didn't lessen the urge he felt to call her, just to make sure.

Maybe he would grab breakfast for both of them, though that would involve leaving her alone. The daylight streaming through the questionably clean windows reassured him a little.

Red John wasn't stupid enough to strike after dawn broke if he didn't have to.

Holding on to what little comfort that offered, he grabbed the car keys again, shrugging into his jacket. At some point during the long night, he had showered and changed, figuring that he wasn't going to get anything else productive done.

A half hour later, armed with enough greasy food to keep Lisbon happy (and, naturally, fresh coffee), he knocked on the green-painted door.

It took almost a minute, but eventually the door swung slowly open, revealing a messy-haired Lisbon, blinking blearily at him. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt that looked like it came from her high schools days and worn cotton pajama pants.

The overall effect made him smile. Definitely adorable.

He held up the paper bag like a peace offering. "Hungry?"

She cleared her throat. "I'm not awake enough to be hungry."

Laughing, he shooed her aside and entered the room. "But I have bacon, my dear. And plenty of coffee, so you should perk up quickly."

Her expression did not look particularly grateful, but after shutting herself away in the bathroom for a few minutes, she sat next to him at the small, rickety table, predictably swallowing a few mouthfuls of coffee before sorting through the selection he'd provided.

He let his eyes flicker over to the rumpled bed. The idea that he could have spent his night there was so powerful in that moment that he was almost stunned. What would it have been like, waking up next to her?

Swallowing roughly, he grabbed the container that held his eggs and stabbed blindly at them with a plastic fork. He needed to keep his head in the game, and thoughts like the ones he was having didn't do him a damn bit of good.

Oblivious to the mental war he was having with himself, Lisbon was currently eating what he thought was her fourth strip of bacon, her paper plate full of ketchup-covered hash browns. She had ignored the small package of fresh fruit.

"It's amazing you haven't died of high cholesterol yet," he remarked, taking a swig of tea.

Looking him dead in the eye, she deliberately dumped an unhealthy amount of salt on her food, then proceeded to take a large bite.

He laughed at her sheer obstinacy.

"Did you sleep at all?" she asked abruptly, eyes much sharper now, taking in his face.

His smile turned sheepish. "What do you think?"

She looked like she wanted to jab him with her fork. "Jane, so help me God, one of these nights, I'm going to hit you over the head with a frying pan and knock you out for a good eight hours."

He waved a hand dismissively. "I'm fine, Lisbon. I got a little bit of a nap on the beach, and it'll get me through. Besides, that's why they put caffeine in tea."

Her cheeks colored a little at the mention of the beach, but she still attempted to look stern. "If I start to think it's becoming a problem, if I catch you drinking coffee or anything weird like that, I'll have Rigsby and Cho hold you down and force feed you sleeping pills."

"How charitable of you, Saint Teresa," he quipped, stretching his legs out under the table, purposely brushing against her.

Eventually, she kicked him out, and he paced aimlessly around his room until she knocked on his door, fully dressed in her standard outfit - black jacket, black pants, neutrally colored shirt. It was as if she was attired for a funeral. The woman needed some color in her life.

"Ready to go?" she asked, making a mental note, he was sure, of the perfectly made bed.

Chivalrously, he held out his hand. "After you."

The rest of the team was gathered around the CBI vehicles, eyes instinctively scanning the surrounding areas. It was hard to overcome natural police reflexes, and in this case, he wasn't remotely convinced it would be a good idea if they did.

Their little makeshift headquarters in the Malibu police station was bustling with activity. The locals were helping out, going through security footage from businesses within a few blocks of Mary Iverson's house or canvassing the neighborhood.

With as much care as he could, Jane was starting to check into the whereabouts of the seven men on the suspect list. There was a heavy new undercurrent to his looking - Red John knew exactly what he was going to be doing, the sort of information he was looking for.

Even though Grace could have looked up half of what he needed to know in about five minutes, he chose to do it himself, not wanting to put anyone else in any more danger. He cared about the team, very much, and if he could make them safe, he would.

Additionally, there was always the problem of Red John being able to infiltrate the CBI computer system. He had done it before, and there was every reason to think he would do it again, especially since he essentially knew the steps Jane was going to take.

In the middle of reading incident reports, Lisbon came over to where he was sitting with her laptop, industrially tapping on the keys.

"Got anything?" she asked quietly, looking over his shoulder at the screen.

He shook his head. "Nothing yet," he admitted. "And, like I said on the way down here, I wouldn't be surprised at all if I can't rule anyone else out. I think poor Mary was just a way of showing he was serious, and that he really was able to strike at me where it would hurt. A precursor to the actual game, if you will."

Lisbon looked like the idea made her distinctly uneasy. It made him uneasy, too.

"In fact," he went on, "while I appreciate the firepower you've brought in," he nodded in the direction of the team, "I have a feeling we could figure out just as much back in Sacramento."

She blinked. "Well, aren't you just a ray of optimistic sunshine?"

"It's the truth," he said helplessly. "I'll keep looking, but it's just a feeling I have."

For the rest of the day, she scanned security footage. She told the Malibu PD she was looking for anyone suspicious, but Jane knew that she was looking for familiar faces.

Around six, he went to find her, having failed to come up with something that could conceivably be called a lead.

She was sitting in front of a television, chin propped up on one hand. By the set of her shoulders, he knew she was tired and a little frustrated. He was also willing to bet that there was an ache in the middle of her back from staying in one place for so long.

"How's it going?" he asked, and she jumped, having failed to hear him enter the room. "Easy," he added, lightly resting his hand on one of her shoulders.

Turning back to the screen, she blinked several times, trying to refocus. "Not a thing I can work with," she said, and he heard the irritation. "I don't recognize anyone. Not only that, no one even looks remotely suspicious."

"Well, damn the people of Malibu for generally being law-abiding citizens," he quipped, and she rolled her neck back and forth until it popped a few times.

"Are you ready to call it a night?" he asked, noting that her eyes were red. Too much intense staring at grainy images for too many hours.

"If you are," she conceded. "How's the rest of the team getting along?"

He shrugged. "About as well as you are. I think there's going to be more dead ends than you can shake a stick at on this case." She rose, and his hand slid from her shoulder to the small of her back. "How does stopping for dinner sound? All of us," he added. "I know a place where they serve a six pound hamburger. Rigsby will love it - if you can eat the whole thing in fifteen minutes, you get it for free."

She laughed as they walked back through the station, subtly leaning into the press of his hand.

As it turned out, the rest of the team was nearly ready to explode with frustration. With one of the highest closure rates in the bureau, they weren't used to sitting around twiddling their thumbs, looking for directions to go in. A meal with actual food and a couple of beers would do wonders for their temperaments.

Naturally, Rigsby ordered the massively oversized burger. Lisbon's wasn't the only cholesterol he should be worrying about, Jane thought, and then he remembered that the other man's health was Grace's department now.

She did not look pleased at her boyfriend's selection. He, of course, didn't notice, being too busy practically squealing with delight.

The food here was as good as he remembered, and after the first beer, everyone visibly relaxed. The banter started flowing, and he was reminded of the early years with the team. They had all come a long way since then, walked a great deal of difficult paths, mostly because of him.

Still, he knew that each of them would step in front of a bus for him, and he would do the same.

They were family, like Lisbon always said.

The hotel was quiet when they got back, parking lot nearly full. Rigsby moaned slightly as he shuffled off to the left, having successfully gotten his meal for free. Jane had a feeling Grace wouldn't be showing up there later. Cho and Van Pelt slowly followed Rigsby, sharing stories of Rigby's stupider misadventures in food.

He and Lisbon turned to the right, walking close together. For just a second, he considered taking her hand, but then they were at her door.

"Go get some sleep," she ordered, hand on the doorknob.

He gave her a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am." He turned to go.

"Jane," she said suddenly.

She looked pale under the glow from the fluorescent bulbs. He saw her swallow. "Sleep," she repeated, "but if you can't..." She trailed off.

He smiled softly. "If I can't," he finished, "I know where you are."

"Okay," she nodded, then turned the handle.

Still smiling, he sauntered off to his room, hands in his pockets. Did she really expect him to knock on her door at three in the morning if he found himself utterly unable to rest? Probably not. Did she want him to? Definitively yes. And that was something to hold on to.

"Jane!" came Lisbon's abrupt, frantic scream, slightly muffled.

Sprinting, he reached her door in just a few seconds. As he entered the room, he saw Cho and Van Pelt running in their direction.

Lisbon was standing near the door, absolutely still, one hand still on the light switch.

One the wall directly in front of them, a red smiling face leered at them, glistening wetly. His heart dropped into his stomach.

The rest of the team burst inside, weapons drawn, looking around for the threat. Without speaking, Cho and Rigsby crept across the room, communicating with gestures. In another ten seconds, they had cleared the bathroom and closets, holstering their guns only when they felt it was safe.

While they made sure the room was empty, Grace had called the Malibu PD. Lisbon was still standing in the same place. He had moved to stand at her side, one hand curled lightly around her waist. He didn't remember doing it - it must've been some unconscious gesture on his part to touch her, to physically reassure himself that she was alright. She was radiating tension.

In a few minutes, they heard the sirens. No one had spoken much.

An hour later, it was discovered that the security cameras had been remotely scrambled and disabled. It wasn't surprising.

The face on the wall was painted with blood. They just weren't sure who it belonged to.

Around midnight, the crime scene techs took off, and Lisbon instructed her team to go to bed. "There's nothing more we can do here tonight," she said, waving their protests away. "I'm going to go see if they have another room, and we'll just pick up in the morning."

Jane watched as she gathered her things, giving the marred wall a wide berth. His pulse still hadn't returned to normal, the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

As they exited the room, he saw her shiver, and he knew what she was thinking.

Twenty minutes later, she was dressed in her pajamas, sitting on the edge of the bed in his room. There was some sort of science-fiction convention in town currently, and the low rates of the hotel appealed to many of the event-goers.

He supposed rooming with Grace was another option, but they had things to discuss anyway. Besides, it wasn't like he was going to be able to sleep this night either.

"Was it just a warning?" she asked, fingers twisting in the patterned comforter.

He nodded thoughtfully. "I think. Both to you and me, actually." A warning to Lisbon, just to make sure she knew what she landed herself in. And a warning to him - _catch me, or deal with the consequences._

This wasn't likely to be the end of it, either.

He ran a hand down his face in frustration.

Lisbon's face was worried. Although he was certain she had rationally known about the threat hanging over her head, this made it all real. Red John was close, and he was keeping one eye on her.

"Lay down," he told her. "You've had sort of a rough evening. You need to sleep." His tone didn't invite argument, so she swung her legs into bed, still keeping close to the edge.

He walked around the room, flipping off lights and double checking that the door was locked properly. With a sigh, he sat back down in a chair, pulling another one up to rest his legs on.

They were quiet for a few minutes. Then, "Jane, this is ridiculous."

"Hm?" he asked.

"We're not seventeen," she said, voice a little exasperated. "I think we can probably sleep in the same bed and be just fine."

_Speak for yourself_ was the immediate response he came up with, but bit it back in time.

And it wasn't the worst thing he could think of.

"Have it your way," he finally said, then carefully got into the other side, keeping on top of the comforter and well to his side.

She rolled to face him.

"I'm scared of what the next move is going to be," she whispered, and he knew it wasn't just herself she was worried about.

He reached out in the darkness until he found her hand, then laced their fingers together. Her grip was tight, letting him know that she wasn't exaggerating about her fears.

"Me, too," he admitted. "We're just going to have to catch him."

"We've been trying to catch him for ten years, Jane," she said, and there was a trace of hopelessness in it.

"I know," he murmured, "but it's never mattered as much as it does right now. I_ will_ find him, Lisbon, for no other reason than I _have_ to." He squeezed her hand lightly.

They didn't speak after that, just lay quietly in the deceptively peaceful room, each lost in thought, until he felt her grip loosen.

Slowly, trying not to jar the mattress, he scooted closer, until their bodies were just touching, still keeping her hand.

Too much was at stake now.

Yes, he would catch the son of a bitch.

Like he told Lisbon...he _had_ to.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:** Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I think I got back to everyone who left feedback for chapter two who had an account, but if I didn't, I apologize!

The plot will thicken! Dum dum dummmm!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Four**

She woke up abruptly around four in the morning, confused by the darkness and the warm body so close to hers.

It came rushing back in a moment though: Malibu, the leering face on her hotel room wall, Jane crawling into bed with her.

Sometime in the night, he had rolled onto his side, their fingers still laced together. His other hand was wrapped around her arm, nose almost touching her shoulder.

She was almost scared to move, worried that she would wake him and end this moment. Avoiding his touch had become almost deliberate and instinctive at this point in her life. It meant too much, resonated in her heart for far too long. And she didn't need anything else to obsess about endlessly at night.

But she had learned yesterday what his hair felt like beneath her fingers, and she was on her way to discovering a plethora of new things tonight as well.

Like the fact that Jane had a callus on his palm, just beneath his wedding ring. What the man did that gave him such a mark, she had no idea, but she filed it away in the back of her mind just the same.

She wished she was brave enough to turn onto her side, facing him, to reach out and put her hand on his chest, to fully curl into his body. It was going to wait for another day, however, and she decided to just be alright with waking up next to him in any capacity.

Even if he was fully dressed and on top of the hideously printed comforter. And she was pretty sure he still had his shoes on, too.

He murmured indistinctly, and she lightly squeezed his hand in response.

She wondered if he had nightmares, then felt almost stupid. Of course he did. He probably always would. There were some wounds that time would never truly heal.

The glowing numbers on the standard-issue alarm clock told her it would be dawn soon. Really no point in going back to sleep now.

Instead, she stared at the ceiling, wondering what the day was going to bring.

Would there be more explicit threats towards her? Would she find a corpse in her vehicle? Or would she _be_ the corpse?

Jane seemed to think that she was in no immediate danger, that Red John was going to save her for his endgame.

Normally, Jane wasn't wrong about things like that, but it still made her nervous. Hell, she would be insane to not be worried. There was a bloody calling card three doors down, for God's sake. She was definitely not exaggerating or being overdramatic.

They needed another clue to go off of, something to point them in the right direction.

Unfortunately, this particular case wasn't looking like it was going to give them what they were so desperately seeking.

Which meant they were going to have to wait until they had another victim. It was a disgusting thought, one she abhorred.

Not only was the loss of life senseless, but she was beyond terrified of the emotional damage it would have on Jane. Even though it had been ten years, he was still fragile, more fragile than she figured she could imagine.

She supposed it was because he had really made no effort to move on, to heal or get his life back on track. He was living in a world that had been violently created a decade ago, and he had no intention of leaving it until he had seen his grisly task completed.

He was beyond damaged, beyond flawed.

If she was looking in from the outside, she would label herself as perhaps the biggest idiot in the world for falling for him. But it was far too late to back out now. She was in it for the long haul, Patrick Jane having imprinted himself on her so thoroughly that she was effectively ruined for anyone else, despite never even having been kissed by him.

Now that was a depressing concept.

However, even now, in the stillness of early morning, very nearly in each other's arms, she knew it wasn't the right time for that. She could only hope that they would get there.

Soon, also, would be nice.

She studied his shadowed face, noted every line, slightly relaxed as he slept. Hungrily traced the contour of his lips with her eyes.

Yes. Soon would be very nice.

Eventually, he stirred, and she kept her grip on his hand very light, expecting him to pull away. He didn't however, and she worked up the courage to look at him.

His eyes were very soft and still sleepy. "Hey," he murmured, voice scratchy.

"Hey, yourself," she replied, as was her norm. His thumb brushed over her knuckles.

"Sleep well?"

She shrugged. "Not particularly, but that's probably to be expected."

He smiled. "Under the circumstances, I'd say it would be strange indeed if you managed to rest easily."

There was something unbelievably monumental about this, about sharing a quiet conversation in the pure light of dawn after having spent the night next to each other. She realized with a start that she had dreamed of this for so long that it had caught her off guard when it actually happened.

Not precisely in the way she had imagined, but that just went to show that she should be careful what she wished for.

However, they could only linger for so long. Beyond this room was a whole, horrible world, and it was their job to make it a little less awful.

She made coffee when Jane was in the bathroom, relishing the aroma as it percolated. Even crappy hotel coffee was better than nothing, and God knew she would need the caffeine today.

It was nearly eight thirty when they both emerged from the hotel room, Jane shrugging into his jacket as she dialed Cho.

"Sounds good, see you then," she said as Jane locked the door behind them.

He waited for her to end the call before handing her the keys to the Chevy. "Well, boss? What's the plan?"

"We're going to meet them at the precinct, see if the locals managed to pull anything from the security tapes around the hotel. Unfortunately, I'm gathering there were a lot of people in weird costumes running around here last night, so our chances seem slim at best." She sighed, sliding into the driver's side.

"Naturally," he agreed, staring out the window.

She really was starting to think that Jane was right, that they would have been better off staying in Sacramento. At least they would have been in familiar territory, on familiar ground.

One more day. She would give the investigation here one more day, and if nothing turned up, they would head back to Sacramento in the morning and continue the search from there.

Like she had predicted, most of the security footage the police had managed to gather from surrounding buildings had more than one strange looking person in it, but everyone appeared to all be part of the science fiction convention. She was sure Red John knew it was happening and took the opportunity to slip into the crowd undetected. After all, what was one more person dressed in a mask?

Also, there was always the possibility that it hadn't even been Red John that broke into her room. He certainly had enough minions to delegate the task to, especially since there had been no actual killing involved.

Rigsby, Cho, and Grace were going over statements from guests in nearby rooms, hoping that someone had heard or seen something useful.

Jane settled himself next to her temporary desk, apparently lost in thought. She did notice that he was keeping an eye on her, and she didn't know how she felt about that.

Naturally, nothing came from the interviews the team was looking at, and there were no new leads, either with the break in or about Mary Iverson's murder.

Beyond frustrated, she instructed everyone to pack their equipment up and be ready to leave first thing in the morning if nothing new broke overnight.

She felt like she could hear the seconds tick away on the clock. Red John was getting closer to taking another victim, and they were basically powerless to prevent him. Nor did they have any way of predicting who would be next on his list.

The other's didn't know about the connection with Mary Iverson, and she wanted to keep it that way. It just felt too personal, too private to share.

At precisely 4:59 that afternoon, her phone rang. The caller ID told her it was Bertram, and she took a deep breath, willing herself to act normally on the off chance her boss was a serial killer.

"This is Lisbon," she answered formally, feeling Jane's eyes on her face.

"Just checking in, Teresa," came her boss's familiar voice, and she wondered again if he was the man responsible for so many deaths. "Any breaks in the case?"

It took her a second to remember that she hadn't told Bertram about what had happened in her hotel room the night before. She quickly rattled off the information, hoping to God the surprise in his tone was genuine.

"Jesus," he said. "What does that mean? Is he targeting you?"

"I have no idea, sir," she said, suddenly weary. "I think if all he wanted to do was kill me, I'd be dead by now."

There were several moments of silence. Then, "What's the plan, Agent?"

She pushed back from her desk. "If we don't learn anything new overnight, we're headed back to Sacramento first thing. There's no point in us staying here if there's nothing to work with." It felt like a terrible idea, giving her plans away to someone on the suspect list. Then again, he was her boss - what was she supposed to do, lie? Plus, there was only a one in seven shot that it was him, anyway.

She still felt massively uneasy as she hung up.

Jane was shaking his head. "Like I said, you're a terrible liar."

"What?" she asked, immediately offended. "I didn't _lie_ about anything."

He rolled his eyes. "Technically, no, but your intonation screamed _I'm hiding something_. I think a deaf person could have picked up on it. Even if Bertram isn't our guy, he's still going to know something suspicious is going on."

She held out her hands. "But nothing suspicious _is_ going on. I told him the actual truth."

He caught her gaze. "The question is going to be, if something does happen tonight, is it to keep us here? Or if nothing happens tonight, is it to make sure we go back?"

She thought through the implications of his words. "Shit," she whispered. "I'm going to need to be locked in a rubber room before this is over. How the hell are we going to know the truth about anything?"

Apparently the fear in her voice was more pronounced than she thought. Jane carefully put a hand on top of hers. "It's going to be alright," he said quietly, though she knew he had no right to promise her that. He certainly didn't know. "We're just going to work with what we're given, and try to gain back the ground we've lost."

Even under her anxiety, she noted his use of the word we and it made her feel a bit better. She was his partner in all of this, and it seemed he really had finally started to accept that. _Silver linings,_ she thought, then fought the urge to giggle hysterically.

Sure, she might be playing poker with Red John on Thursday nights, but at least Jane was willing to keep her in the loop for once.

What a ridiculous thought.

But it was something to hold on to, something that she could talk herself off the proverbial ledge with.

A room had opened up during the day in the hotel, so she moved her suitcase there, giving the now neatly-made bed in Jane's room one regretful look.

She checked all the closets twice, Jane at her heels.

He was now going to be on the other side of the building, something that made her a touch nervous. The rest of the team was also far enough away that she felt practically isolated.

She told herself to not give into the fear, not give into the paranoia, but she still kept her gun within arm's reach at all times. She also propped a chair in front of the door. Not that it would keep anyone out who was determined to get in, but it might at least give her a little bit more time to prepare herself.

Sleep was fitful, punctuated by vivid dreams.

The mirror told her she looked absolutely horrifying the next day. Her eyes were puffy, face very pale. She ruthlessly tugged her hair back into a tight ponytail, but feeling almost exposed, she let her tresses fall around her shoulders.

Maybe she should just eat coffee beans today. Or get caffeine injected through an IV.

Was this part of Red John's psychological warfare, too? Scaring her enough she wasn't able to sleep?

If she was being honest, she was a bit (alright, _really_) disappointed that Jane hadn't made an appearance last night. He had called her a few times, just to check in, but she kept hoping she would hear his knock on her door, that he would show up and make her feel a little better, at least for a while.

She refused to acknowledge to herself that she would have liked nothing better than for him to climb in bed with her again.

Jane was waiting for her at the Chevy, leaning against the passenger side door, hair ruffled in the light breeze. Honestly, even with his light stubble, he looked unbelievably handsome in the sunlight. It was hard to fathom that his beautiful creature had once crawled up the aisle in a church on his hands and knees to secretly meet her, or that he slept in an attic on a make-shift bed.

He insisted on driving after taking one look at her face. "I'd prefer to not die on the way back," he said, then pulled the keys out of her hand. "And you look like you'd fall asleep at the wheel before we even left the parking lot."

Giving up with just a token bit of resistance, she slid the passenger seat all the way back and closed her eyes. Jane slept on enough of their trips...she figured she was entitled to a little bit of reciprocation.

When she woke up, they were halfway back, and her phone was ringing.

Though she could have predicted what the call was, she still felt like choking when she heard the words.

She slowly sat back up, blinking rapidly, mind full of questions.

"What?" Jane asked, and there was dread in his voice.

"Kristina Frye was found dead this morning," she said, as emotionlessly as she could.

Jane's grip on the wheel became deadly tight, lips forming a single straight line. "Red John, I presume." It wasn't a question.

"Yes and no," she began, thinking.

He waited silently for her to continue.

"All immediate indications are that she...that it was suicide," she said. But there was more, and Jane knew it, still saying nothing. "But there was a smiling face above her bed," she went on.

"So he told her to do it," Jane mused, eyes back on the road, his driving very careful. "Somehow, either he did it himself, or he told someone else how to do it."

She frowned. "So you think she was hypnotized?" she asked. "It makes sense. I guess I always thought that her mind had sort of shut down as a way of protecting itself."

He shrugged. "It was always what I thought. The lights we found in the room with her, her general behavior...I'd definitely guess she was hypnotized. Which means that someone could control her."

She shivered lightly at the implications. Rigsby's run-in with a hypnotist was all too vivid in her mind. Jane had almost gone over the side of a building during that little incident.

The other thing that was about to come to light was the connection all the victims had to Jane. Every member of the team knew that he had been out with her, knew that there had once been something, however slight, between them.

It made her feel so petty that she had harbored jealousy towards the other woman. But she had been someone that Jane had been attracted to enough that he had asked her out on an honest to God date. Granted, Jane had admitted to her that it was going nowhere fast, but still.

Kristina had been the first woman since his wife to hold his interest enough for him to act on it.

In her darker moments, the fact that it hadn't been_ her_ still stung deeply.

They pulled into Sacramento in mid-afternoon, dark gray clouds starting to accumulate over the city. Because, she thought, storms would just make her day better.

The building where Kristina Frye was institutionalized was landscaped tidily, paved paths winding through the green lawn. However, there was no escaping the fact that it was not a place that anyone would want to visit. The brick facade was imposing, the bars on the windows more so.

Kristina Frye's room was empty except for the cheap oak dresser and simple bed. No one had moved her body yet, just pulled a sheet over the still form for modesty. The stains that had seeped through the white cotton were enough to tell them Kristina had slashed her wrists.

The painted face above the bed was thinner than they would usually find, almost clumsily drawn, but she supposed it was difficult to tap into artistic talent when you were bleeding to death.

They didn't stay long. Jane looked like he was very nearly ready to shatter, like a clock that was wound too tightly.

She didn't know if it was Kristina's death or the room in the institution that was the cause of it.

When they reached the outdoors, and she saw Jane take several deep breaths, she figured it might be the latter.

She drove back to CBI. Jane looked at the building clouds and spun his ring absently around his finger.

"I need to think about some things," he said when they entered the building, seemingly distracted. "Do a little research."

"Fine," she nodded, knowing this meant he was going to hide away for the next several hours.

He mirrored her gesture, then focused firmly on her. "Do not leave this building without me." The force in his tone startled her, and then she realized that he truly was worried about her safety.

So she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek, hoping her own fear wouldn't come out through her touch. He cupped his hands under her elbows for just a moment, steadying her, but let her go as soon as she stepped back.

"I'll be in my office," she promised, and walked away.

Jane turned and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Neither of them saw Robert Kirkland watching through a window in the bullpen.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN:** A big thank you to everyone who left me a review! You guys are wonderful and so inspiring! I have about five minutes to get this posted and then I'll be gone for the rest of the day, so I figured you guys would rather have a new chapter up instead of a response from me. ;)

This is dedicated to the lovely MleeWrite, who may or may not have inspired events later in the chapter. Ahem.

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Five**

Instead of pouring over files, his nose an inch from the paper, Jane sat in his chair in front of the desk, staring thoughtfully out the window.

The rain had started to fall an hour ago, right after they returned to CBI, and it suited his pensive mood. Pensive, and very agitated.

It had been a long time since he'd been in a locked room like Kristina's, and he had felt unbearably trapped after just a few minutes. Too many memories came rushing back, too many vague and blurry images from that awful time immediately after he'd lost Charlotte and Angela.

He had managed to keep himself together until after their funerals by some miraculous act. Had been able to shake hands and accept condolences and pick out headstones. He had gone with simplicity, even though his immediate instinct was to commission some elaborate marble facade. Angela would have despised it, he realized. After the flashiness over her childhood, the over-the-top pomp, she favored understatement.

Two days after the quiet funerals, he had checked himself into the institution, lucid enough to understand that he couldn't handle this by himself. He knew, even then, that he needed to get revenge, needed to right the wrong his wife and daughter had been dealt. He also knew that if he was left alone to cope, he would wind up putting a bullet in his head and all of those plans would be lost.

Sophie Miller had wound up being his savior, at least until he'd met Lisbon. Towards the end of his time there, Sophie had even convinced him to talk about his past, to work on remembering the good things that had happened in his life.

He blinked.

There was a thought there. He tried to bully his brain into finishing it. There was a great deal of fuzziness present, and he knew his mind was just trying to protect itself from feeling the pain from that period of his life. Not that it ever really left him, of course.

His happy memories.

"_Shit_," he whispered emphatically.

Well, there at least was one mystery solved, at least as much as it needed to be. It had been so long since he had said those things to Sophie that it would be impossible to track down how the information had gotten passed along. Besides, he had a feeling it had been in an illegal manner, probably using the technique of breaking and entering. He was quite sure Sophie hadn't willingly shared that information with anyone, but he was also quite sure that she had recordings of their sessions together.

At least he would be able to convince Lisbon that Red John wasn't a psychic now.

She was getting desperate for answers, he knew. Otherwise she never would have brought up that ridiculous theory of Barlow's in the first place. He should have told her she wasn't supposed to believe in that sort of thing, being a good Catholic girl and all.

He hoped they would find some answers about Kristina soon, too.

It was a nice, macabre touch - having the woman take her own life. Unexpected. But, then again, Red John had warned him that the rules were changing now.

Strange, though. Kristina wasn't precisely a happy memory. In fact, she was more of a regret. However, there was no denying that he had definitely been attracted to her at one point. She was quite pretty, and seemed very at peace with herself. Of course, she was a terrible fraud, and perhaps he had just wanted to force her to admit it.

He had enjoyed matching wits with her, though he spent most of their short time together dealing with how strange (and, yes, wrong) that it felt. Perhaps it was because she was the first woman he'd looked at with something approaching real romantic interest since Angela, but the guilt had managed to creep up on him almost immediately, and he knew it would never work.

Still, she hadn't deserved what she had gotten, then or now. There was no point in killing her, none at all. Hell, the woman already thought she was dead. It was just the symbolism of the gesture, he figured.

He doubted Red John himself had been inside the institution. Too much of a risk involved there. No, he had more than likely sent one of his minions with a set of instructions. And minions, as well-trained as they usually were, had a habit of getting caught.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. They would have to wait and see.

Absently, he checked his phone. No messages. Lisbon was respecting his wish to remain in solitude. He only hoped she was complying with his other request as well. She was safe inside the CBI, he was fairly certain of that, at least for now.

Red John just wanted to scare her, and he knew it was working. He was scared, too.

Sighing, he stood, stretching, and made for the door. Though he was no closer to figuring out who the next victim would be, he had made progress in other areas. Besides, he was getting antsy, being so far away from Lisbon.

His heart skipped several beats when he reached the SCU floor and saw Bob Kirkland sitting in Lisbon's office. He made a beeline for her door, noting in the back of his mind that Lisbon might as well have been wearing a sign that said _I suspect the hell out of you_. A huge, blinking, neon sign. The woman was a terrible actress.

Her posture relaxed as he entered the room, and Jane strove for nonchalance.

"Kirkland," he said casually, shaking the man's hand, wondering if he was the only one that was remembering Lorelei's slip. If Kirkland was thinking the same thing, he didn't give a thing away. "What brings you to the CBI?"

The other man gave him a small smile. "Red John, of course," he said, and Jane hoped he wasn't looking at Lisbon because she paled markedly.

Still striving for nonchalance, he perched on the edge of Lisbon's desk. "I'm still not sure why DHS has decided to get involved with this case." There was an implicit question in his words, and Kirkland smiled again, though it was in no way reassuring.

"It's a long story," he said, "but rest assured, we have very good reasons." He sat up a little straighter. "Red John seems to be on a bit of a spree at the moment, but I'm sure you've noticed that. Any thoughts as to why?"

Jane shook his head. "I can't figure that out yet," he said, trying to sound frustrated. "He's been quiet for a long time. I don't know what the trigger was."

Behind him, Lisbon took a drink of coffee. He was sure she was just trying to give herself something to do that wasn't sitting there, looking obvious.

"And are you personally any closer to finding out his identity?" Kirkland asked, but there was still nothing in his expression to give away his intentions.

He shrugged. "Damn difficult to make progress when Red John doesn't leave any clues behind."

"Fair enough," Kirkland agreed easily. He checked his watch. "I need to get going," he told them, "but please call me if you come up with any new leads."

Jane stood at the same time Lisbon did. "Of course," he said. "Hopefully we'll have something soon."

After he left, Lisbon's shoulder visibly slumped, and she sat heavily on the couch, pulling a pillow into her lap and toying with the fringe along its edges.

"Well," he remarked, sitting next to her. "Do you think that could have been more awkward?"

"Jesus," she whispered. "The only thing I could think about was what if I was sitting in the same room as a serial killer? I couldn't even focus."

He smiled indulgently. "Yes, I noticed that. We need to get you some acting lessons. People are going to start thinking you have some sort of disorder."

She smacked his arm half-heartedly. "You're not helpful."

"One of these days," he said, "we really need to figure out how DHS is involved in all of this."

"Maybe they just like to have their sticky fingers in a lot of things," she suggested, not looking like she believed it.

"Way to look on the bright side," he joked, "but you're wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but that's not the reason for the involvement now."

They were silent for a few minutes, thinking. Kirkland was definitely hiding something, but it was impossible to tell what. Maybe it was that he had a crush on Lisbon, but somehow he doubted it was anything that benign.

"Stiles is off your list," she said abruptly, and he stared. "Officially."

"What?"

She stood, rummaged around on her desk for a moment, then handed him the newspaper. "Page three," she told him, and he scanned the columns until he found what he was looking for.

_Visualize Leader on Hand for Opening of Center in Vienna._

He skimmed the article. The picture was from three days ago. Factoring in travel time, there was no way Stiles could have personally killed Mary Iverson.

"Maybe," he said, "Or he could have just told one of his followers to commit the crimes." It needed to be said, even if Stiles was near the bottom of his list.

Lisbon raised her eyebrows. "Did Mary Iverson feel like a Red John murder?"

"Yes," he admitted quietly. "But it's still impossible to be sure."

Sighing rather dramatically, she lowered her head to her knees. "I need more coffee. Or a very large beer. Or both."

He lightly rested a hand against the bare skin on the nape of her neck. It was decidedly an intimate gesture, the first time he had ever touched skin that wasn't her face or her hands.

It felt lately like they were up against the world, the two of them standing shoulder to shoulder against some unknown evil that was gathering in the corners. He took a moment to be grateful that he had her.

Even if she was probably going to give herself away to whoever was actually Red John.

She sat up again, and he slowly let his hand fall away.

"You need to get some sleep tonight," he said softly. "You still look like death warmed over."

Of course, she really didn't. Just very, very tired. He was willing to bet she had slept for about two non-consecutive hours the night before.

"You're just a sweetheart," she muttered, but at least she didn't hit him again.

He grabbed her wrist, checking the time. "We're free to go," he said. "And we probably should. All we're going to do here is drive ourselves crazy."

She looked at him skeptically, and he realized there was some irony in his words. "Whatever you say, Jane." Glancing outside, she shrugged. "I suppose there's no harm in getting home when it's still light out, either."

The fact that she was scared felt like swallowing lead. This was Teresa Lisbon, fearless leader of the Serious Crimes Unit, armed to the teeth and willing to do whatever it took to get the bad guy.

"Feel like ordering pizza?" he asked, not at all keen on the idea of leaving her alone for another night.

"Uh, sure," she replied, caught a little off guard at his sudden request.

They walked out together, and he didn't like how exposed it felt.

He followed her to her apartment, then watched as she methodically searched it from top to bottom, compulsively checking locks on windows.

Three beers and several slices of pizza later, she looked slightly relaxed. He knew she was about at the limit of what she could drink and still remain absolutely clearheaded, and he appreciated that her next beverage was water.

She wasn't taking any chances with her safety.

"Humor me," he said, loading plates into the dishwasher.

"In what capacity?" she asked, predictably suspicious.

"Let me sleep on your couch tonight." It would make him feel better, at least, and if anyone asked, he could simply say he drank too much.

"Fine," she conceded after just a few seconds, and he knew she wanted him there, too.

Which was how he found himself sprawled across her couch, wrapped in a San Francisco Giants blanket, staring in the direction of her front door.

The light rain that had been falling earlier had turned into a full fledged storm, complete with crashing thunder and flashing lightning. It seemed to be picking up more intensity as the night went on, and he wondered if he would be able to sleep through this.

A particularly loud boom reverberated throughout her apartment, and from upstairs, he heard the tell-tale rustle of sheets and the padding of soft footsteps.

A few moments later, she stood in front of him, looking like her nerves were absolutely shattered. In the sporadic light, he could see she was close to tears.

"What is it?" he asked, immediately concerned. "What's wrong?"

"This is so stupid," she whispered. "I can't even sleep because I'm scared of a little thunder. How the hell did my life get like this?"

Without speaking, he pulled back one corner of the blanket and held out his arms. She didn't hesitate, but instead, curled in against him, arms going around his waist. He could feel the tension in her petite frame, and slowly ran his hands up and down her back.

After a while, she relaxed marginally, but made no move to leave, and he lightly pressed his lips to the crown of her head. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you," he murmured.

And though they both knew he couldn't promise that, she let it go, let him lie.

She jumped at next crash of thunder, and he tightened his hold.

Propping herself up with one elbow on his chest, she peered into his face. "Do you think I'm an idiot?" she wanted to know. "Scared of a little storm?"

He gazed evenly back. "It's not the storm you're worried about and you know it."

"Jane, this is ridiculous," she said. "I'm a cop. I've had my life threatened before, sometimes on a daily basis. It should be no different now."

He scoffed. "To borrow one of your favorite phrases, my dear, that's sheep dip. It _is_ different now. There's no use pretending otherwise."

She sighed, sounding exhausted, and he touched her cheek. "It's alright to be afraid," he told her. "I'm afraid, too."

She heard something in his tone, and her expression softened, her eyes getting deeper. She knew he wasn't afraid for himself.

He brushed his fingers across her cheek again, trailing them down until they touched the undiscovered softness of her lips. The tension that covered them now was nearly palpable.

In the dark, in the middle of the night, it was impossible to remember why rules shouldn't be broken.

Lisbon looked like she was waiting for something, permission maybe, so he leaned upwards, hand still on her face, and carefully captured her lips.

She responded almost immediately, pressing herself against him, and he knew the roller coaster ride of the past few days had brought all of her emotions to the surface. Her mouth opened, and he took advantage, groaning when she rolled her hips into his reflexively.

His fingers fell from her face, roving over her back, toying with the hem of her jersey until he gave into unholy temptation and slid his hands over her bare skin.

It was both fortunate and unfortunate that she wore something underneath, though it definitely couldn't be termed as "much."

Their tongues tangled as he explored the contours of her back, loving how she shivered when he caressed the sides of her bare breasts, dared to touch the skin underneath the elastic of her panties. Just a little farther, a matter of a few inches, and he could find out what she looked like when she fell apart in his arms. His fingers trembled.

If he had ever wanted her before, it was nothing compared to now.

Her hips moved against his again, and he forced himself to drag his lips away from hers, planting open mouthed kisses along the column of her throat.

"It's time to stop," he managed to breathe, wondering in the back of his mind what the hell he was thinking.

Busy with the act of unbuttoning his shirt, she didn't reply, choosing instead to slide her hands over the planes of his chest. Jesus, _that_ felt so good he hoped he could hold onto his willpower.

"Teresa," he said, "we need to take a break." He softly wrapped his fingers around her wrists.

"Why?" she wanted to know, lips pouting out in a way he found nearly irresistible.

He swallowed. Hard. "Because I don't want the first time to be because you're scared."

His words hit home, so he went on. "Don't think I don't want this," he assured her. Grinning wryly, he took her hand and showed her exactly what he meant. Even in the dim light, he saw her cheeks color a bit more, and he quickly pulled her fingers away before she got any ideas. "But I don't want it to be colored with desperation."

Slowly, she nodded, leaning forward and resting her head against his chest. He knew she could feel the hammering of his heart.

"Soon," he promised, "when we're both not scared half to death, I have some fairly elaborate plans for you."

"Is that so?" Her voice was a little tremulous.

"You won't be leaving your bed for a week," he assured her.

She chuckled quietly, meeting his eyes. "I'm going to hold you to that."

He smiled, then kissed her lightly.

"Let's go upstairs," she said, sliding off of him in what he was certain was the most sensuous manner she could. "Why sleep on the couch when I have a queen-sized bed?"

"Fair point," he conceded, following her closely as she climbed the stairs. He hadn't bothered to button his shirt back up.

She snuggled into him almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, and he wondered how he had lived without this for so long.

The storm continued to blow against the windows, but it didn't bother him nearly as much as it had before.

It was a dangerous step that they had taken, but it couldn't be undone. And remembering what her skin felt like as it heated under his touch, he knew he wouldn't, even if it was possible.

All hell was breaking loose around them, but they had this moment, this night to hold on to.

He tightened his grip on her.

Hold on to it he would.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: **Sorry for the delay…life has been very, very busy lately! In that same vein, sorry this chapter isn't particularly long, either. HOWEVER, summer vacation starts on FRIDAY for me, so I should have more time. Assuming, you know, my students don't drive me totally insane before then!

AND…whatever happens in this story may or may not reflect my personal theories on who RJ is. ;) Thanks for reading!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Six**

She woke with the sound of gentle rain falling in her ears. Perhaps it was the softness that brought her from sleep, a total opposite of the thundering booms she had drifted off to.

Her dreams had been vivid, almost frighteningly real.

She swore she could remember what Jane's hands felt like sliding up the back of her bare thighs, how he groaned when she rolled her hips against him, so full of delicious friction she thought she might burst in to flames.

It wasn't the first erotic dream she'd had about the blonde consultant – far from it, in fact, but this one felt so very true that she felt the ache of want blossom in her chest. God, if only.

She rolled to her side with a little difficulty, seemingly tangled up too tightly in her blankets to move properly. That would also explain why it was so damn _warm_ in this bed.

"Alright," came a sleepy voice, "I'm officially down to my last six inches of space. Scoot over or I'm going to be on the floor."

She sat up so fast she thought she might have dislocated something.

Jane was indeed on the very edge of her bed, arms now loosely around her, shirt unbuttoned. Sweet Jesus, it had all been real. All of it. She had made out with Patrick Jane on her couch in the middle of a thunderstorm.

It wasn't a scenario she was prepared to handle. She had literally kissed him for all she was worth, had arched into his hands as they swept over her skin, remembered what he had felt like under her palm.

At that thought, she was quite certain she blushed violently and practically threw herself back onto the mattress.

It was at that point that she realized she was still wearing an oversized jersey and not much else, and that the aforementioned jersey was currently bunched up around her thighs.

Muffling a squeak, she yanked the comforter up to her shoulders.

Jane chuckled lightly, turning onto his side and pulling her wildly overheated body into his embrace.

"Would a simple _good morning _have been less distressing?" he asked, clearly amused.

"I thought I dreamt it," she muttered, face pressed into his chest. Even with her embarrassment, she wasn't willing to pass up an opportunity to be close to him.

"Ah, no," he said, still almost laughing. "No, I think your dreams would have been a little more fulfilling."

That was probably true. But she understood why he'd stopped them, even if she didn't have to particularly like it.

For ten years, his life had revolved around revenge. He had denied himself most everything in the way of creature comforts, focused instead on righting the massive wrong he had been dealt. It wasn't very surprising that he didn't want his first time with her to be tainted with her fear of Red John.

Regardless, she was positive sex with Jane would have done a lot to relax her.

_Not_ sleeping with him definitely had the opposite effect.

God, her brain wasn't working right. Jane's proximity was…unsettling. For the past year, it had felt like they had gone out of their way to not touch. And now, suddenly, here she was, wrapped in his arms, the memory of his lips still burning up her mind.

The abrupt shift in their relationship was enough to leave her head spinning.

"Things going a little fast?" he whispered, again demonstrating his uncanny ability to read her mind.

"A little," she admitted. "I'm not saying it's a bad thing," she hastily tacked on, lest he think she wanted him to go, to pull back. "Just something I didn't expect."

She felt his smile against her skin. "I understand the feeling." His fingers ran through her hair. "We're here now, however, and while I'm willing to go back to the way things were if that's what you want, I'd really rather not."

The way things were. Pretending that last night and this morning had never happened. That was probably not a particularly viable option.

"I just don't see how that could work at this point," she said, wondering where that left them. Were they a couple? Were they…not? Was there a reason her brain suddenly thought she needed to label this? Really, there was nothing wrong with simply _being_ with him in this capacity, so she told herself to shut up.

"Okay," he murmured back quietly, and that was it.

She must've drifted off again, because the next thing she knew, Jane's thumb was brushing over her cheek. "I hate to say it, but we need to get up. My boss is sort of cranky in the morning, and I don't want to make her mad by being late. Plus, we _are_ in the middle of a murder investigation."

Like she could have forgotten. A cold feeling crept over her, but she kept it at bay, choosing to focus on the warmth of Jane's body instead.

With a sigh, she sat up, shoving her hair out of her face.

An hour later, they pulled into the CBI parking lot, Jane a few minutes behind her. She had a feeling Red John knew where he had spent the night, but she didn't want the rest of the world privy to that information just yet.

Cho was almost hovering outside of her door when she made it to the SCU floor. She wasn't sure if that was good or bad. It certainly meant new information, at the very least.

"New security camera footage," he said without preamble.

She blinked as she unlocked the door, dropping her keys and coffee mug on the desk. "I thought everything was scrambled."

"So did we," he told her, "but the law firm three buildings down just installed cameras two nights ago. I think our buddy Red John simply didn't account for them because when he was scoping the place out, they didn't exist."

"A mistake," she whispered. "Ha, I knew that son of a bitch was only human. Have we gotten anything from it?" she asked, louder.

Her second in command shrugged. "Van Pelt is going through it right now. She has a data base of all the known employees, and she's using some sort of facial recognition software. Or so she told me."

Lisbon understood the meaning – Van Pelt's computer skills were so advanced, the rest of the team just mostly nodded and smiled when she told them what she was doing.

"Okay," she said. "Let me know as soon as you hear anything."

Jane walked in the door then, tea cup already in hand.

She filled him in as Cho left, wondering what was going through his mind.

"If Red John didn't know there were cameras nearby, he knows now," he said eventually, sitting thoughtfully in front of her desk. "Grace needs to work fast, or I guarantee that footage is going to find a way of disappearing."

It was a fair assumption – it wasn't like Red John hadn't hacked their computer systems before now.

Much of their day was spent waiting for the phone to ring, or at least that's how it felt. She knew Jane was thinking the same thoughts – who would be next? When would they find their next smiling face?

He all but forced her to go out to lunch, insisting that she would feel better after eating real food. Then again, maybe the office was starting to feel as claustrophobic to him as it was to her.

They hadn't been back more than an hour before Grace called them out to the bullpen.

"I think I found our guy," she said, pointing to the figure on her computer screen. It was a little blurry, true, but she had faith in Grace's ability to fix that. "The facial recognition system doesn't pick his face up," she said. "There are no records of him. Now, everyone needs a keycard to enter the building, so I checked the log in records, and the card belongs to an Edward Boyer. He's a nurse there, but he's also 6'5 and black."

The footage they were looking at might not have been high quality, but it was quite obvious the man on screen was a white man of average height.

"Does Mr. Boyer have an explanation as to how his keycard wound up in someone else's hands?" Lisbon asked.

"I checked on that," Rigsby piped up from his desk. "Boyer called in sick to work two nights ago, really sick. He wound up at the hospital with a severe case of food poisoning. The front desk of the ER had him checked in a full hour before this footage was taken."

They were all silent for a moment, digesting that information.

"Can we skip the part where we pretend there was any chance it was all coincidence?" Grace asked.

Jane nodded. "Yes, I think that ship has sailed. So, our mystery employee does something to Boyer's food that makes him violently ill, causing him to go to the hospital and leave his keycard unattended."

"So the man on screen isn't Red John," Lisbon said, thinking out loud. "Not if Boyer is still alive."

"More than likely, no," Jane agreed. "It would have been too risky."

"But it's still a lead," Grace said, determined to be positive. "I might be able to track this guy down, get him to talk."

"Assuming Red John doesn't just kill the poor bastard," Rigsby added.

They all knew it was definitely a possibility.

"I guess we'll just have to see," Lisbon finally said, not liking their odds but not seeing any other options. "Find who this guy is, Grace, and we'll go from there." She turned to Rigsby and Cho, both of them now at their desks. "Go to the institution. Talk to everyone who was in the hallway where Kristina Frye's room was, even if they were only there for a second. Find out everything they know, everything they saw."

The rest of the team dispatched, she watched as Jane wandered up to the attic. She had feeling he was going to stare at his timeline board, thinking and then rethinking about a million different theories. And as much as she was fascinated by watching him work, she figured he could get more done if she left him alone.

So she shut herself in her office, attempting to discreetly do some research on the whereabouts of the men on Jane's suspect list. The inclusions of the names of Sheriff McAllister and Reede Smith threw her; they seemed to come totally out of left field.

McAllister they had only dealt with once, about a million years ago, and while he clearly hadn't like them, she didn't think he was particularly harmful. Then again, she clearly remembered the creepy vibes he had sent off when he was trying to persuade Grace into taking a ride with him.

As far as Smith went, she'd only worked with him recently, and only on one case. It had been the first case since Jane had been back with their team, and she just remembered being so utterly tense throughout the whole thing. She'd really just wanted things to go back to normal, so she'd tried to put on a good face.

Underneath it all, however, she had been trying to deal with the aftermath of Jane sleeping with Lorelei. Of all the unexpected things that had happened in the past six months, Jane taking a lover was easily the biggest shock.

But she _would not_ think about that now. They were past all of that.

Sort of.

Most of the time.

Back to Smith, though…the only thing that stood out in her mind was that he had a bad temper and that Mancini had been the superior agent in their partnership.

Of course, if he _was_ Red John, he would have to be a skilled actor, so she would be stupid to judge on just what she could see.

She hated this, suspecting everyone, not trusting anything.

Again, like with the Mary Iverson case, all seven Red John possibilities were still viable, especially if Red John had simply sent a minion to do the work on Kristina Frye. She wondered it would be at all possible to tail one or more of these men. Yes, they would have to wait until a murder happened to cross someone off the list, but, she thought hysterically, it seemed to be the best option she could come up with so far.

Of course, they could be wrong, and it could certainly be Red John on that video. No one really knew what had happened to Kristina, what sort of hypnosis she was under. Jane was probably one of the best hypnotists in the country, and even he didn't have the ability to take someone out of a trance. Then again, if the person knew the trigger…

She was getting a headache, running in circles.

All of this would have been easier if she didn't have to do her searching in such a roundabout manner, if she wasn't worried about leaving a trail that would be glaringly easy to follow.

It didn't take long for her to be thoroughly sick of this task.

Clicking her mouse forcefully, she closed all open windows on her computer screen before pushing away from her desk and standing up.

Five minutes later, she was knocking on the attic door, hoping Jane would have some theories that would make her brain hurt less.

"Come on in, Lisbon," he called, which surprised her. It had been months since the door had been unlocked.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, jacket off, staring out the window. She got the feeling he had been spending a lot of time doing this lately.

She walked across the room and stopped in front of the paned window.

The day had turned sunny and bright, an odd counterpoint to the gloom in the attic. "Do you think we'll get anywhere?" she asked.

He sighed. "I have no idea." She heard the rickety bed creak, then heard his footsteps. He stopped behind her, arms going around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder.

Although she hadn't thought about it when she was downstairs, _this_ was really what she had wanted. Even if it made no real difference, having him close was worth something, if only in her mind.

She let out a breath, leaning back into him, fingers ghosting over his. It felt wonderful, letting Jane carry some of her weight. It felt like she was giving up some of her burdens, even if it really wasn't fair to him. The man had more than enough on his shoulders without her problems.

They stayed like that until her phone rang.

It was Grace.

"You're not going to believe this," she said without preamble.

Jane shifted until his ear was nearly against her phone.

"Out with it," Lisbon said.

"I figured out who the man in the footage was." There was something in her voice, something that said they had come up with something big.

"And?" she asked, hoping her tone was steady.

"It's Brett Partridge."


	7. Chapter 7

**AN:** Blanket thank-you time! However, I'm officially on summer break starting tomorrow, so my free time is going to increase dramatically. Hooray! That being said: you guys are all amazing and wonderful and I should be writing sonnets to your eyelashes and stuff.

Also, this chapter might be a bit M-ish towards the end. Ahem.

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Seven**

Almost immediately after Grace's pronouncement, he felt his guard go up. Lisbon stiffened in his arms, pulse speeding up noticeably.

"I'll be right there," she said into the phone. "Actually, is there any way you can show me this in my office?"

Grace gave her affirmative, and Lisbon disconnected the call, shoving the phone back into her pocket.

"Thoughts?" she asked, turning to face him. He left his hands on her waist.

"Damned if I know," he almost whispered. "Honestly, I didn't expect to catch anyone we knew on the footage."

He knew what her real question was - was Partridge a disciple or was he the man himself? The idea that it _could_ be him, throwing out the eager comments at Red John crime scenes, full of ghoulish knowledge...he could feel a headache starting to form at his temples, but he forced it away. His brain could implode later.

"Let's go see," Lisbon said, shaking her head slightly.

He followed her out the door, reflecting that just a few minutes ago, he'd been close to relaxing. How the times changed.

The rest of the team had already assembled in Lisbon's office by the time they arrived. The door was shut, as was the blinds. Although he had done his best to keep them out of the investigation, they were all detectives, and knew very well that something big was about to go down.

With a few deft key strokes, Grace queued up the footage. In a second or two, images started to appear. Pushing one more button, Grace sped up the playback until it reached the time she wanted.

Jane watched the figures go across the screen with rapt attention.

"There," Lisbon said, pointing. "He's there."

The footage froze. Sure enough, now that they knew it was him, it was obvious that Brett Partridge was walking by the camera, dressed in hospital scrubs.

"The time matches up too precisely for it to be anyone else using the stolen keycard," Grace told them.

Partridge walked out of the frame, and the playback ended.

They all stared at the blank screen for a few moments, processing.

"Do we call Partridge in for questioning?" Rigsby asked. He usually tended to favor the direct method, but that simply wasn't going to work this time.

"How many people know about this tape?" Jane directed at Grace.

"Just you guys," she said. "Cho was the one to discover it existed in the first place."

"Make sure it stays that way," Jane warned. "No one else can know about this, not yet. Not until we have more evidence."

"Can you make a couple of copies of this, Van Pelt?" Lisbon wondered. He knew what she was thinking - there was the possibility of evidence disappearing and she didn't want to be left hanging.

"Sure, boss. I'll do it right now." The redhead quickly left the room and went to her desk, grabbing some blank discs. No one spoke until she returned.

Jane took one copy of the disc, Cho took the other.

"I want you guys to work this angle," Lisbon said quietly, "but it's going to be tricky. You're going to have to do it without CBI resources. We all know our computer systems have been compromised in the past. Even with Grace's new skills, I don't want to leave anything to chance."

They all nodded their understanding.

"I don't need to tell you how important this is," she went on, "but I will anyway. We're getting close, guys. Let's not drop the ball now."

She sat behind her desk after they left, and he stretched out on the couch.

"Have I mentioned this all makes me very nervous?" she asked.

His lips quirked. "No, but you didn't need to."

She was silent for a while, and then he heard her tapping on her keyboard. "Jane," she said after a minute, and there was something in her voice that caused him to sit up and take immediate notice. "Come here."

He swung off the couch, then went to stand behind her chair, one hand on her shoulder.

On the screen, her e-mail was displayed. She was staring at a message from Ray Haffner, wanting to know if she was free for lunch sometime soon.

"Really?" she asked, and there was a note of barely concealed hysteria in her voice. "I mean, _really_? Am I going to have to interact with the entire suspect list this week?"

He could feel the tension in her body, so he put both hands on her shoulders, hoping to convey that she wasn't alone. "It's okay," he said. "Remember, Haffner only has a one-in-six shot at being a mass murderer."

"Very comforting," she replied, acid in her tone. Then, "I have to meet him, don't I?"

"I'm afraid so," he admitted. "If he is Red John, we can't risk him thinking anything is suspicious. Remember, you don't know anything."

His thumb found a knot of tension in her back, and he kneaded it gently, her head falling to one side. She needed to relax or she was going to shatter.

He supposed they could always have another impromptu make-out session, but he doubted either of them would leave particularly relaxed. Of course, now that the idea had popped up in his mind, he found it was monstrously appealing.

The memory of her bare skin under his hands had been haunting him all day.

He glanced at the clock. It was after five, and he figured the less she had to deal with people, the better off she would be.

"E-mail Haffner back," he instructed, "then let's get out of here."

She turned to face him, surprise. "What should I say?"

Regretfully, he slid his hands from her shoulders. "Tell him you're free tomorrow, unless something comes up. Might as well get it out of the way."

With halting, unsure motions, she tapped out her message, looking very much as though she'd rather be doing just about anything else than making a lunch date with a man who could be Red John.

"Do you think I should wear a wire?" she asked a few minutes later, locking her office door.

He considered. "I don't think that's a terrible idea. But you need to act like everything is absolutely normal. Do you think you can do that?"

She sighed wearily. "Maybe if I have a few drinks."

They rode the elevator in silence, both lost in thought. He walked her to her car. "Mind if I come over later?"

She blinked, surprised. "Um, sure." They looked awkwardly at each other for a second. He wanted to kiss her. She knew it, too, and she definitely wanted to be kissed.

Instead, he winked. "Be patient," he whispered. "This is as difficult for me as it is for you."

He made sure she was safely on the road before walking back into the building. The rest of the team had vanished except for Grace, who was checking and rechecking something on her computer screen.

"Find anything?" he asked without preamble.

She shook her head. "Not yet," she said, sounding frustrated. "It's damn difficult to work and try to keep it off the radar."

He nodded sympathetically. "I'm sure. But, like Lisbon said, this is big."

"I know," she told him, but she didn't sound annoyed. "Jane, I just wanted to say thank you."

"For what?" he asked, completely nonplussed.

"For trusting us," she said quietly. "I know you're not telling us everything, and that's okay, but thank you for trusting us enough to let us in, at least a little."

He was oddly touched by her words. "You're welcome, I guess, though I doubt I'm doing you any favors."

She lowered her voice. "Red John is responsible for almost ruining my life, Jane. I had to shoot my fiance, a month before my wedding, because of him. I don't care if it puts me in danger. I have a bone to pick with the psycho, too." There was something hard in her eyes, and he was again reminded that his was not the only story that had been altered by the man.

"Go home," he said, but gently. "Go home to Rigsby. It's where you're supposed to be, anyway."

She smiled in acknowledgement. "I will in just a little bit. I just want to check on a few more things."

"Alright," he said. "I'm going upstairs for a while. See you in the morning." He touched her shoulder briefly.

"Goodnight," she replied. "And say hello to Lisbon for me later."

He stared, and she rolled her eyes.

"You might be pretty good at hiding things, but Lisbon certainly isn't. It's written all over her face."

"I'm just going to check on her," he protested, though rather half-heartedly.

Grace's smile became wider. "It's about time," was all she said.

He could have said that, no, they weren't together, but he supposed they certainly weren't with anyone else.

The attic was quiet and dim, and he stayed there for a few hours for appearance's sake. If he suddenly changed his habits, spent all of his time with Lisbon, it would be a glaring red flag.

Grace's comments made him a little nervous, too. If she could tell there was something going on between them, who else could? Rationally, he knew there had been gossip about them for years, but no one had really known anything, mainly because there was nothing _to_ know.

He was pretty sure people had lost a lot of money in the office pool when it had gotten out that he'd slept with Lorelei Martins.

It was dark before he left work for the night. He hit most of the green lights on his way to Lisbon's, and he wondered if that was an omen.

She opened the door just a few seconds after he knocked, telling him she'd been waiting. In fact, she looked like that was all she gotten around to doing. She was still dressed in her work clothes, heels still on, gun still in place.

He smiled indulgently as he locked the door behind him, chaining it for good measure. "You're a mess," he told her, starting to search through kitchen cabinets without permission.

It wasn't long before he found what he was looking for. With a few quick motions, he uncorked the bottle of wine and poured her an admittedly large glass.

He noticed her fingers were shaking as she took it.

"Drink up," he instructed. Leaving her in the kitchen, he climbed the stairs to her bathroom, turning on the water before digging through the cupboards again.

She followed a few minutes later, appearing just as he was adding a gratuitous amount of bubble bath to the hot water.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He stood. "It's not what I'm doing, my dear. It's what you're doing."

She raised her eyebrows.

"You're taking a bath and drinking about two more glasses of wine. I don't know if I've ever seen you more wound up, and people are going to start noticing." He made for the door. "Get in," he added. "I'll be downstairs."

He could feel her eyes burning into his back as he left. Still, listening hard from the foot of the stairs a few minutes later, he heard the distinct sounds of clothes hitting the floor, and he swallowed. Hard.

Shedding his coat and rolling up his sleeves, his settled on her couch and found the remote wedged in between the cushions. Television wasn't a particularly effective distraction, but he did make an effort for a good half hour or so. He had no damn idea what he watched, however.

Lisbon called his name after a while. "If you're going to insist on being an overbearing jackass, you can at least bring me more wine. Apparently, I have a certain quota to drink."

He chuckled at the annoyance in her voice as he climbed upwards, bottle held in his hand. "Are you decent?" he asked at the door.

"Not really," she said, "but I'm covered."

Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the room. She hadn't been lying - she was covered. In bubbles. Her hair was up in a messy topknot, tendrils slipping out to curl against her neck. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat and the alcohol, and she looked utterly lovely.

She followed his movements as he crossed the tiles to perch on the edge of the tub, her glass held out expectantly. With surprisingly steady hands, he poured a generous measure into the stemware.

"Feeling calmer?" he asked, putting the bottle down.

She shrugged. "It's pretty hard to not relax in this environment." Her lips were stained a soft shade of rose courtesy of her drink.

The temptation was suddenly more than he could bear.

Leaning down, he covered her mouth with his, taking the glass from her lax fingers and setting it on the floor. She tasted precisely like sweet red, and she didn't hesitate to open her mouth at his coaxing.

Her arms went around his neck, wet and soapy, and he allowed himself to be pulled farther into her kiss. Of course, if he wasn't careful, he was going to wind up in that tub with her.

He traced the contours of face, her collarbone, fingers sliding easily on her damp skin.

Unconsciously, she arched up, and he gave her what she wanted, testing the weight of one breast in his palm. She groaned as he slowly thumbed the peak of it, absolutely loving her reaction.

Her breathing stuttered as he caressed her soapy stomach, hand drifting lower.

"Just so you know," she whispered, tearing her lips away from his for just a second, "I don't feel particularly relaxed right now."

He grinned wickedly. "You will."

She gasped sharply as he touched her, one hand curling around his wrist. Her lips trembled against his.

His fingers drifted easily, their movements made easier by the dampness he found, different from the water. Her nails dug into his skin as she stretched around him, thumb moving in a circular counterpoint.

As her muscles stiffened, he kissed her again, reveling in the feeling of her breaking apart. Slowly, he brought her back down, still keeping her mouth.

When her eyes opened, they were bright, clear.

"Relaxed?" he asked, words infused with what could only be termed as masculine pride.

To his surprise, she turned her face into his neck. Then again, Saint Teresa was probably a little modest.

He carefully pulled her out of the tub, keeping one arm around her as he reached for a towel. His shirt was more than a little wet, but it felt supremely irrelevant.

She reached for his belt, but he gently shooed her hands away. "Not tonight."

Slowly, he guided them down the hall to her room. "Get dressed," he whispered as they crossed the threshold. It was definitely not what he wanted, but like he'd told her the night before, the first time wasn't going to be when they were surrounded by fear.

Of course, the minute this was behind them, he intended to take her to bed and not get out until they were both on the brink of starvation.

Tonight had been a nice prologue to that, however.

He averted his eyes as she dug through her drawers, figuring he could be a little bit of a gentleman.

A few minutes later, she stood in front of him, rising on her toes to kiss him again.

"Do you think you can get a little sleep now?" he murmured, arms around her waist.

She looked up at him with deep eyes. "Are you staying?"

He smiled. "Unless you're kicking me out."

Lisbon pretended to think about it for a moment, so he abruptly scooped her up and tossed her unceremoniously into bed. Tossing his wet shirt into a pile on the floor, he flipped off the lights and joined her.

...at which point she smacked him in the face with a pillow.

Laughing outright, he pulled her into his arms. She didn't fight him, but rested her head against his chest as he tugged the comforter over both of them. Absolutely everything was relaxed about her now, languid even.

A job well done on his part, he thought smugly.

As he lay awake, her breathing evened out. This was the second night in a row he was going to spend in her arms. It was funny - it was like he couldn't remember what it was like not to do this.

Even more reason to keep her safe.

Lunch with Haffner was going to be another obstacle to overcome, one more front she needed to put on. However, he figured she would probably be safe enough going. Daylight wasn't a friend of murderers.

And he would be here at night, as long as she'd let him. And if she changed her mind, he would be in the parking lot.

Unbidden, the image of the smiling red face in her hotel room in Malibu leered at him. He doubted Red John had finished taunting them - far from it, in fact.

What the next tease would be, he had no idea.

He could only hope it _was_ just a tease, and not the real thing.

His arms tightened around her, and he felt a shiver of fear. Softly, he kissed the top of her head, willing his terror away.

It was a paradox - he'd never been this close, never had so much to gain.

And, as he looked down at the woman in his arms, he knew it had been a decade since he'd had so much to lose.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: **I never intended to take a week to update this, I swear! Life just sort of happened! Sorry!

Think of this as the last calm(ish) chapter before the storm. Whee!

Anyway, thank you to everyone who reviewed. You are all amazing and I want to buy you cookies and fluffy kittens!

Again, what happens in this story may or _may not_ reflect my own personal opinions on who RJ is. Winky face.

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Eight**

Lisbon fervently hoped that she never got used to waking up beside Jane. Ever.

There was just something so precious and unguarded about him in his sleep, half draped over her, curls so tousled she had to resist the urge to run her fingers through them.

Of course, after last night, she was pretty sure she had the right to.

Her skin got tingly just thinking about it. She was never going to be able to look at bathtubs the same way again. The man knew a thing or two about relaxation techniques, that was for sure.

She only wished he'd let her return the favor in some capacity. However, he maintained that they weren't going to take the next step while this current cloud of fear hung over them. He had a point, really, and she understood that.

It didn't stop her from wondering what he would do if she, say, made short shrift of his zipper and had her way with him.

_Those_ images were enough to cause her to shift restlessly beneath the comforter.

Unfortunately, her phone chose that moment to ring shrilly, cutting through the peace of the early morning. Sighing, she reached for the cell. Calls at this time were never good.

The screen told her it was Rigsby.

"What's up?" she asked without preamble, Jane stirring next to her. She could feel the tension in his muscles; he understood what these phone calls meant, too.

"Brett Partridge was found dead in his apartment this morning," Rigsby replied, sounding as though he'd gotten very little sleep.

Beside her, Jane sat upright, having heard the conversation.

"What?" she asked, voice a little shrill.

"Yeah," Rigsby said. "Neighbors called the cops. Said they thought there was a funny smell coming from the place."

She swore. "Do they have time of death?"

"Uh," he replied, and she heard the rustle of paper. "M.E. says between 24 and 36 hours ago."

Blinking rapidly, she ran a hand through her messy hair. "Alright. Text me the address. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Before she'd even ended the call, Jane was out of bed and commandeering the bathroom. She got ready as best she could, wondering how today had gone from pleasant to downright awful.

There was their first major lead, gone.

Then again, it meant one less suspect to investigate.

She felt relatively confident that they could also cross Stiles off, so they were down to five out of the original seven Red John possibilities.

"So he was a minion," Jane said, a half hour later, as they drove towards the scene. "There would be no point in killing him otherwise. He wouldn't eliminate someone from the list for no reason."

"I agree," she said, thinking it sounded like a very good possibility. "I just wish we could have learned a little more before this happened."

"We'll see," he told her, absently reaching for her hand as she drove. "I don't think he ever intended Partridge to be found out. He would have had to move quickly. I realize he's thorough, but there's definitely a possibility here. We know from experience that when he's rushed, he makes mistakes."

She knew he was thinking of Carter Peakes, the case that had been brought to her attention a few years ago, when the whole horrible incident with Bosco had happened. Red John had made a mistake with that man, having to think on the fly, as it were, and so many people wound up paying with their lives.

Part of her wanted to add that Red John was much less experienced then, but she got the impression that Jane needed some sort of hope to hold on to, and she was damned if she would be the one to take it away from him.

This must all be incredibly frustrating for him – being so close, and yet, unable to truly make progress unless Red John wanted him to.

The team was waiting for them at the crime scene. There seemed to be more police here than normal, but then again, Partridge _was_ a member of the CBI. Additionally, he was another Red John victim, the third in not a particularly long span of time. Heightened law enforcement presence should be expected.

Jane went immediately to the room Partridge had been found in, and she decided to give him a few minutes to do his thing without interruptions.

"Do we know anything?" she asked Cho, grateful for his stoic presence. It gave her something to emulate, something to lean on. Every night, she prayed he would stay with their team, even though he was more than qualified to lead his own.

"One neighbor reported seeing a dark sedan leaving here yesterday afternoon," he replied, not needing to check his notes.

"A dark sedan?" she repeated. "Anything more specific than that?"

He shrugged. "It had four doors."

"Well," she said, hearing the sarcasm in her own voice, "most sedans do." She took a deep breath. Snapping at her team would do no good. She just wished the neighbors would be nosier.

Jane reappeared then, hands stuck in his pockets. "Definitely him," was all he said, and everyone in their group stood a little straighter. Over the years, they had all gotten in the habit of not labeling it a Red John case until receiving official confirmation from Jane.

"So Partridge knew who he was, but Red John didn't really trust him, like he did with Lorelei," Grace mused. "I mean, he let her stay in prison without having her killed, unlike a lot of his other minions."

"I just want to know how Red John figured out we knew Partridge was involved," Rigsby said, eyes roving over the small crowd around them.

"He must've seen the video footage from Kristina Frye's institution," Cho said. "That's the only possible explanation."

Grace shrugged. "The original copy was uploaded on the server," she said. "I just downloaded it to my computer. It's certainly possible that he saw it there."

"Hm," Jane said quietly. "I wonder if it's still there. The footage, I mean. I've got my copy, I'm assuming Cho has his, so really, it wouldn't matter. Unless, of course, he doesn't know we have copies."

All eyes turned to Grace. "If he wasn't watching at that exact moment, I don't think he could know what we did. Besides, the only people that knew Partridge was on that tape were, well, us."

"Definitely something to find out," Jane told her. "But we should go back. There's nothing more to see here. Let the rest of these fine agents do their job, and we'll go do ours."

They all exchanged a long, dark look before disbursing. Jane took a moment to stare at the open door of Partridge's apartment.

"Let's go," he said eventually, putting one hand on her back.

She turned to face him. "I figured you'd want to go through Partridge's stuff, see if there's something useful."

He smiled, just a little. "What makes you think I didn't already find what I was looking for?"

She knew he wasn't going to say another word until they were properly alone, so she let him lead the way back to the vehicle. He took her hand again, but she was the one that laced their fingers together.

"Don't worry," he said softly, "I'll tell you. Just give me some time to process."

This was not a Patrick Jane she was accustomed to – an open, honest man, who actively sought to comfort her. It was…unnerving.

They lapsed into silence as she drove. Once, he brought her knuckles to his mouth, almost as if he wasn't even thinking about his actions, and she was suddenly thrown back to the night before.

At some point, they probably needed to have a conversation about what was going on between them. Despite her earlier thoughts that there was no use in labeling it, she found she wanted to. Perhaps it would simplify things, and God knew she needed a less complicated life.

Maybe Jane could be her boyfriend, instead of her consultant that she spent the night with and who did unspeakably pleasurable things while she was taking a bath.

The words Jane and boyfriend sounded strange when they were assembled in her mind. It was like she mentally stuttered. And the remembrance of her bathtub didn't help.

His self-control was monumental. Rationally, she had known that, but never had it been driven home more fully than when he had stopped her from unbuckling his belt. Any normal man would have probably helped the process along. Not Patrick Jane, though, of course not.

She felt a sudden, keen desire to make him throw away the tight rein he kept on himself. To know what he did when he fell apart, when he stopped thinking and just gave over to what his body was telling him.

_God_, how she wanted that.

Almost like he read her mind, his fingers tightened around hers.

When they found themselves alone in the elevator, he shocked her to her core and took her face in his hands. He kissed her quickly, but urgently. She didn't have enough time to know if it was desire for her or desperation in general that drove him.

Then he was gone, four steps away, the slight flush in his cheeks the only evidence that he was anything less than composed.

The team was waiting in her office when they finally arrived.

"The video isn't on the server," Grace said without preamble. "I'm not sure what that means, but like Jane said, if Red John knew we had copies, there would be no reason to delete it."

"Alright," Jane said slowly, leaning back against her desk. "I want you all to act dejected when you leave. Not alarmingly so, just enough so that anyone watching will think we've hit a dead end."

"But we have, haven't we?" Rigsby asked, one hand on the arm of Grace's chair. "Hit a dead end, I mean."

Everyone looked at Jane. "Not necessarily. We still have the video. Red John is going to assume that we're going to keep the Partridge connection to ourselves, just because we're paranoid. After all, it's become sort of obvious that there's a mole in the CBI. Since no one is going to know that Partridge was connected to Kristina Frye's death, the police are going to think that he was simply another Red John victim. No one is going to look too closely into his personal life. Except us, of course."

"What makes you think Red John left anything for us to find?" Cho asked, practical as ever.

Jane smiled. "I'm going to assume that Partridge had a pretty strong online presence. Fangoria role playing, or whatever the kids are doing these days. Do you really think he kept the fact that he was working for a notorious serial killer totally quiet?"

"But if Red John has already hacked the CBI systems, who's to say he's left Partridge's websites alone?" Grace wanted to know, brows furrowed.

Lisbon spoke for the first time. "Do you think Red John really got into the CBI mainframe? Or did someone else show him the way? Clearly, he has people on all levels of this organization. I doubt he would waste his time pushing buttons on a keyboard if he didn't have to."

Smiling wider now, Jane turned to face her. "Precisely my thoughts, Lisbon. What's the point in having minions if you're not going to use them?" He pulled a handful of folded papers out of his jacket pocket. "You should all be proud of me – I printed out Partridge's browsing history when we were at his apartment earlier."

"I'm impressed," Lisbon said. "Maybe someday you can get a smart phone."

Jane ignored her. "Partridge's background was a naked demon lady holding a pitchfork. Very visually…uh, visual."

There was a knock on the office door. Looking up, she saw that Kirkland was standing in the hallway, looking wildly impatient.

Her heart jumped into her throat. This was decidedly not what she wanted to deal with right now, especially since they had just left a crime scene, Brett Partridge's mangled body still fresh in her mind.

However, she forced herself to remember that there was still only a one in seven shot that Kirkland was a killer. He could just be a very suspicious character that kept popping up when something new happened with Red John.

Which wasn't suspicious at all.

"Okay," she said briskly, trying to maintain her professionalism. "Let me know if you guys come up with something. Work quickly, but work carefully."

Everyone left but Jane, who settled himself on her couch.

Kirkland didn't waste much time on niceties, or pretending like he cared about anything other than the case. "You can't possibly tell me he's not playing some sort of game," he said, sitting in front of her desk. He kept smoothing his tie, a gesture he made when he was agitated, she'd learned.

"If he is," she said slowly, "I really don't know why." That was mostly true. She didn't know why these particular victims were being chosen. Of course, he probably never planned on killing Partridge. It was just something that had come up in the course of business.

"Mr. Jane," Kirkland said, turning to face her consultant. "You've been surprisingly quiet. Surely you have some sort of theory."

"Naturally," Jane said easily, "but I fail to see the need to share it with you. After all, Red John is still a CBI case. In fact, you've still managed to not give me a reasonable answer as to _why_ DHS is interested in a serial killer. I'm afraid any thoughts I have are going to remain my own until you decide to be a little more forthcoming." There was something hard in Jane's voice, and she felt her throat close a touch. What if Kirkland was Red John? Did Jane really just give the man an ultimatum?

Her heart started pounding, and she took a cowardly second to hope no one looked at her for a while.

There was a sort of power struggle going on between Jane and Kirkland. Although no one spoke for a few moments, it was obvious.

Abruptly, Kirkland took a deep breath, his shoulders sagging just a touch.

"Fine," he said, and she stared.

Jane, too, looked surprised.

"I've made Red John a priority for DHS," he admitted. "And I did that because catching the man is a priority for me."

"Why?" Jane asked, and there was no accusation in his tone, just simple curiosity.

Kirkland chewed on the inside of his lip, clearly debating. Then he shrugged. "Because he killed my wife," he finally said. "And I had no other way to go after him."

There was utter silence in the room. Whatever she'd expected, it certainly wasn't this.

"Your wife?" Jane repeated quietly.

Kirkland nodded, eyes darting around. "I don't have your set of skills, Mr. Jane. If I wanted revenge, I was going to have to go about it a different way than simply waltzing into the CBI offices."

Something occurred to her. "How long have you been keeping an eye on this case? On Jane?"

He smiled, just a touch. "From the beginning. I'm not stupid, Agent Lisbon. I knew that it was going to take years to even come close to catching Red John. Like I said, I'm not an idiot. I know my own limitations. It made sense to watch what you did."

Jane caught her eye, but she had no idea what he was thinking.

Kirkland took another breath. "I suppose I should apologize for my deception, but I won't. I was simply doing the best I could with what I had to work with." His cell rang then, and he frowned at the number before answering.

Neither of them bothered to pretend they were doing anything other than listening to the conversation. "I'll be there in a half hour," he finally said, roughly shoving the device back in his pocket. "I need to go," he told them. "There was a break in at my office. I don't need to tell you that break ins at the Department of Homeland Security make everyone very nervous."

He left with a nod, and she and Jane were left staring at each other in abject confusion.

"Is it remotely possible he's telling the truth?" she finally asked.

"His file never mentioned a wife," he said. "However, if he was lying, he was hiding it well. He certainly doesn't have any outward tells, at the very least."

"I don't understand," she said.

"Understand what?"

She rested her forehead against her hands. "Anything," she said, "but especially this. Is he on our side?"

There was silence from Jane, and she looked up to see him staring out her office door. "I have no idea," he eventually said. "And right now, that makes him the most dangerous man on our list."

A cold feeling crept over her.

Too many bluffs and double bluffs and double crossing.

She was in the poker game from hell.

And she was all in.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN:** Did I think I was going to have _more_ free time when school got out? I think I might have been crazy or something. Sheesh!

Thank you so much for all the reviews! You guys inspire me to write better (and faster ;)) and I really can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

One more note and then I'll shut up: If you're not reading "Boy Wonder," you should be! Personally, I'm becoming alarmingly obsessed with Jane and Angela and how their relationship started, and I'm one of the people _writing the damn thing_. So, please, give it a shot! You won't be disappointed!

Now…on to the chapter. Buckle up.

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Nine**

Despite the morning they had already been through, Jane insisted that Lisbon still try to meet Haffner for lunch. Yes, they were in the middle of a case, but since they were in Sacramento, there was really no reason not to meet the other agent for a quick bite.

Besides, under normal circumstances, he knew Lisbon would have been happy to bounce some theories of their latest case off of a man whose professional abilities she respected.

Of course, these were about as far from normal circumstances as they could possibly get.

She had looked at him like he'd grown an extra head when he mentioned her date, about ten minutes before she needed to leave.

"Are you out of your damn mind?" she hissed. "There's no way I'm going to be able to pull this off!"

"I know," he said. "But you have to." He handed her a fresh cup of coffee. Automatically, she took a sip, then looked at him with furrowed brows.

"Is there something in this?" she demanded.

He smiled, though it was a little tight around the edges. "Just paying tribute to your Irish heritage, my dear."

Though she tried to maintain her irritated glare, she took another drink.

The actual alcohol in the drink wasn't going to have a noticeable effect on her, but mentally, it would probably calm her down, which was what needed to happen.

Since, unfortunately, he didn't have the time or the proper environment to relax her another way.

But perhaps they'd have an opportunity for that later.

He pulled a plastic baggie out of his pocket. "Still willing to wear a wire?" he asked, eyebrows raised. "I'm not sure it'll do a lot of good, but on the off chance he lets something slip, I want to be able to hear it as it happens."

Lisbon threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Fine. Whatever you want."

He couldn't help but chuckle. "I'm not sending you to the gallows, woman. It's going to be fine. Now, come here and let me wire you up."

Though she looked deeply skeptical, she stood, glancing around the room once to make sure the blinds were closed.

He grinned, then startled her by starting to undo the buttons on her shirt with no forewarning whatsoever.

"Jesus, Jane," she almost yelled.

"What?" He went for innocent. "It's not like you can put this thing on the outside of your shirt."

She slapped his hands away. "I can handle this part myself, thanks." There was a soft glow on her cheeks as she pulled the last button through its placket, then, brash façade in place, pushed the shirt from her shoulders.

He took a moment to admire the picture she made – functional white bra, just the barest hint of lace around the edges, pale skin. He knew firsthand how soft that skin was, and his fingers twitched.

But there were some desires he couldn't quite tamp down. He titled her chin up, met her embarrassed eyes. "You're gorgeous," he murmured, then kissed her.

Her response was a little desperate, but he supposed he could forgive her for that. To say that they were under stress would be like saying Rigsby had a bit of an obsession with Van Pelt.

He pulled back soon, then, without speaking, starting taping the thin wire to her. Finishing his task with a small flourish, he kissed her bare shoulder, then reached for her shirt.

"All done," he said softly.

She sighed, and he wrapped his arms around her from behind. He lightly nuzzled into her neck. "Stay strong," he whispered. "You can do this."

He helped her dress, then gave her one final peck on the lips. "Now go to lunch."

She did, looking like this whole thing was totally against her better judgment. Which it probably was.

Her heart had been beating faster than normal when she left, and he figured he had as much to do with it as the prospect of sharing a meal with Haffner. His idea that she should relax had sort of taken an unexpected turn.

He couldn't help it though – since the first night he'd kissed her, it was as though something within him had broken, some long buried desire come to the surface, unable to be denied longer. For the most part, it just meant that he could act on some of his whims when it came to Lisbon. Unfortunately, it also meant that it was damn difficult to keep his hands off of her.

It was the one good thing that had happened in the past…month? Two months? Ten years? No, that wasn't strictly true. He was coming to the end of his quest for vengeance; that was certainly a good thing, in more ways than one.

But his blossoming relationship with Lisbon had a decidedly different sort of pleasure to it than did revenge.

It made him…hopeful. And anxious. While he would have always tried to protect her, it seemed more urgent than ever, now that she was actually his. At least, he thought she was his. Add that to the list of things they needed to talk about when this mess was over.

For the moment, he just wanted to go with the flow, as it were, and to not think too deeply about labeling what was happening. They were together, and that was going to be enough to see them through these dark days.

Turning his mind back to the task at hand, he took his place beside Grace. They were set up in Lisbon's office, Cho and Rigsby monitoring various computer readouts. Officially, this whole operation wasn't even happening. To that end, the door was locked and the blinds still down.

Originally, he had never intended to tell the rest of the team about Haffner, but since Partridge's death and Kirkland's bizarre confession (had that all really happened this morning, then?), he had rethought his position. The field of suspects was getting smaller, which made the ones they had left more dangerous. After all, there was never any telling what a cornered animal would do.

However, he hadn't told them all of the names, and he certainly didn't tell them that Red John had the same list. Not everyone needed to panic, after all. And Rigsby might have been a worse actor than Lisbon, though Jane had to admit that the man was learning.

"Where are you?" he asked Lisbon through the microphone.

She rattled off her location, and Cho confirmed that the GPS on the wire was working perfectly. Indulging a moment of paranoia, he had also slipped another tracking device into her back pocket. There was no such thing as being too careful now. He hadn't mentioned the move to Lisbon, not wanting her to think that he was afraid for her safety.

And, for the most part, he wasn't. They were in broad daylight, basically right outside the state capitol building. Even if Haffner was Red John, Jane didn't think he would be that desperate yet.

The entire team, himself included, tensed up when Lisbon reached her destination. Haffner was waiting for her, she relayed, and they all heard her take a deep, bracing breath.

They kept the conversation light for the first few minutes, ordering drinks and entrees. Then things changed.

"I heard about Partridge," Haffner said. "Jesus, that was unexpected."

"No kidding," Lisbon replied, and she absolutely wasn't faking her reaction. "It was a pretty damn big shock."

"Any idea why him?" Haffner asked. "I mean, aren't Red John victims usually women?"

There was a rustle of fabric, and he imagined Lisbon was uncrossing her legs in agitation. "Usually, yeah," she conceded. "Unless there's a special reason behind it."

"A special reason?" Haffner echoed. "Like what? From what I understand Partridge was just the creepy guy in forensics."

"That would have been what I thought, too," she said, and Jane silently applauded her. She sounded calm, normal. Maybe the alcohol in her coffee had done more good than he'd thought. "I don't know, Ray, maybe Red John is trying to send a message to the CBI, like no one's safe or something."

There was a pause, and the clink of plates being set down. "Wow," Haffner finally said. "That's unsettling, to say the least. What's Jane think about all of this? He's supposed to be your Red John expert, after all."

She sighed, and he hoped she wasn't about to dig herself into a hole. "Honestly, he hasn't said much. He's sort of kept to himself lately."

"Not even to you?" Haffner prodded, a hint of what might have been amusement in his voice. "I find that hard to believe."

Lisbon snorted. "Ray, he told me himself that I only know about thirty percent of what he did. Most days, I think that number is a gross over-exaggeration."

Jane could feel the rest of the team looking at him, and he shrugged helplessly.

"Thirty percent?" Rigsby asked.

"Meh, give or take," he admitted. "Probably more like eighty percent these days." It was the truth.

The conversation between Lisbon and Haffner drifted to unimportant things, like the latest state senator who was caught with cocaine, or the representative from Oakland who had a thing for prostitutes. She was doing an excellent job of behaving as though nothing was wrong. Perhaps the fact that she had known Haffner for longer, had a decent relationship with him, was helping the situation.

"So, Teresa," Haffner said after a small lull, "I think you can probably guess why I wanted to meet with you today."

Jane thought he could actually _hear_ her heartbeat increase in tempo over the wire. To her credit, she said, "And here I thought you just wanted to catch up, Ray. Since when are you ulterior motives guy?"

Haffner chuckled. "Since you refused to come work with me at my new firm. I gave the CBI my official notice today, and I wanted to know if you'd changed your mind. Or," he went on, "if there's anything I can do to change it _for_ you."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jane saw Rigsby and Cho exchange looks. He'd forgotten – he was the only one who knew about this.

"It's tempting," she admitted, and he thought she was probably being serious. "You have really no idea how much a normal life with regular hours appeals to me, especially lately."

"But you're staying put," Haffner finished.

"I'm staying put," she confirmed.

Lunch ended amicably soon after, with Lisbon being the one to suggest they meet up again soon, using the excuse of hearing how his new project was going. It wasn't something he expected her to say, but he was very proud of her for the performance she was putting on.

Five minutes later, they heard her car door open and close, and she did nothing except for inhale and exhale for several moments.

"Good job," he said quietly in her ear. "Unless you were visibly sweating or shaking, I think you pulled it off."

"Shut up, Jane," she whispered back, voice a little muffled. He thought for a second, then decided she had her head against the steering wheel.

"Get back here," he told her. "We'll see you soon."

The team all sat back from their computers. "You guys should probably go look like you're working on the Partridge case," he said. "We look suspicious as hell right now." He had instructed them to investigate their new crime just as they normally would if they didn't know about the surveillance footage that linked the man to Kristina Frye's death, at least while they were at the CBI offices.

He was quite certain that Red John was watching their activity, and Jane had no desire to throw up any more warning beacons that something was going on.

Twenty minutes later, Lisbon walked in, looking like she needed a very large drink. She flopped down heavily on the couch, one arm flung over her eyes.

"You have terrible ideas," was all she said.

He laughed quietly, then moved to sit beside her. "I'm very proud of you," he said.

Sighing, she removed her arm and looked up at him. "Well," she prompted, "you heard the whole thing. Any red flags, anything that stood out?"

"Not really, no." He shifted slightly. "Of course, there's always the issue of Haffner's organization being funded with Visualize money. Although I'm pretty certain Stiles isn't our man, I definitely think Red John is connected to them somehow."

"And you're worried Haffner is working for him?" she wanted to know.

"Or _is_ him," he reminded her. "I just have this feeling that the whole job offer thing was a play to get you away from me, to start taking my allies away."

She thought about that for a while, her face revealing that she didn't like the conclusions she was coming up with. Then she abruptly changed the subject. "Did you find out anything else about Kirkland?"

Robert Kirkland was a puzzle that needed solving, and solving quickly. His story was so outrageous that it sounded made-up, but that was what was giving Jane pause. Outrageous stories were much easier to check up on, harder to fake than mundane ones. Besides, there was something in his eyes that looked familiar, an echo of the pain he himself had been dealing with for a decade.

If only there was a way to confirm the man's claims without opening himself up for some sort of attack.

"No," he finally said, in response to Lisbon's question. "I haven't really had time. I wish we knew what the break-in at his office was all about."

"We could go see," she suggested, and he blinked. "I can't stand being in this building at the moment," she whispered. "I just feel like I'm constantly being watched, having to put on a show. And then, this whole lunch-date-with-Haffner thing…it's getting to be a little much."

Gently, he touched the line between her brows. He was going to be responsible for putting creases in her beautiful face, but that sounded about right. He wrecked everything he loved.

"As appealing as it would be to get out of here," he said, "I think we need to do some work with Partridge. I don't want anyone getting suspicious, or _more_ suspicious than they already are."

"Okay," she said heavily. "We'll go through the motions, at least while we're here. I'm guessing we aren't going to find any newly installed security cameras this time, though."

He agreed. After Kristina Frye, there would be no more mistakes of that nature. They could only hope that Partridge had left them a clue somewhere in the recesses of the internet.

Lisbon put her game face on for the afternoon, directing her troops with efficiency and authority. Neighbors were questioned, security footage from nearby buildings was lined up for viewing, and Partridge's hard drive was being combed through by Grace.

As predicted, everything came up to be a dead end. There were a few interesting nuggets on the computer, but Jane suspected they had been planted there as a misdirect. Red John had had almost a day to go through and clean up the drive to his satisfaction. They weren't going to find anything that way.

But procedure had to be followed, even if procedure was, in this case, strictly for show.

He set up camp in Lisbon's office, absently scanning the list of cases Partridge had been involved on. Many of them were Red John, and it was easy to see how the decidedly creepy technician had become in awe of the famous serial killer. Partridge was probably the easiest minion Red John had ever converted.

Of course, that was probably the reason why he was dead. He had given his services to Red John out of sheer admiration for the man's work as a killer, not because he believed he was doing so as sort of a religious affair, or out of love like most of the others.

The day was starting to drag. It was difficult to remember that he had woken up that morning with a not-very-clothed Lisbon in his arms. That was certainly something he intended on repeating tonight, or some variation thereof. Her skin was like a drug, and he knew that he was already addicted.

Stopping things before they got out of hand was becoming more difficult, and he knew she was going to be working to undermine his self-control. But when he looked back in time, he didn't want the first night they made love to end with him lying awake, wondering if she was still going to be alive in twenty four hours.

However, there was a part of him that was screaming for him to make sure he knew what it was like, just in case. He tried to quiet that voice – he wasn't giving in because she might die. He absolutely was not going to.

Lisbon broke into his musings, coming back into her office with her fifth cup of coffee of the day.

"I think we should get an espresso machine for the break room," she said, running a hand down her tired face.

"Yeah," he said sarcastically, "because you need access to more caffeine."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Don't be so judgmental."

He was saved having to reply by the arrival of a courier holding a brown-wrapped box. "Agent Lisbon?" the man asked, reading the tag on the package.

"That's me," she confirmed, throwing him a confused glance before signing the delivery receipt.

"I take it this was not expected?" he asked, gesturing at the innocuous looking box.

"Not at all," she replied. They both eyed the package warily, then, with a shrug, she picked up her letter opener and went to work on the tape.

In no time, she was opening the cardboard flaps and peering inside, her trailing hair blocking his view.

She gasped abruptly, then stiffened. Swiftly, he nudged her aside and looked at the contents of the box.

Her hockey jersey was neatly folded at the bottom.

He remembered precisely the last time he had seen this – it had been the night of the thunderstorm, when she had crawled atop him on her couch. He knew how silky the material felt under his hands, how easy it was to slide it up over her bare thighs to touch her overheated skin.

The last he knew, it was wadded up in her clothes hamper. In her bedroom. In her apartment.

There was a note attached. It had no signature, but that would have been superfluous anyway.

He felt panic seize him as he read the words.

_Speaking of happy memories…_


	10. Chapter 10

**AN:** This chapter is brought to you by The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which distracted my two year old long enough for me to finish typing this!

I have been so terribly bad at responding to reviews lately, and I feel awful about it. I should buy you all flowers. However, I just want you to know that you all have my absolute gratitude – I LOVE reading what you have to say!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Ten**

If she thought the morning had been long, the afternoon lasted for an eternity. As it turned out, an eternity was a very, very long time, especially towards the end.

Everything seemed to blur together, which was strange, because she seemed to be watching it all with laser sharp focus.

Immediately after she had read the words on the note attached to her jersey, she had been visited by the immediate urge to be violently ill.

Jane had made her sit, put her head down, and breathe slowly and deeply until it passed. The residual feeling lingered, though, and she was clammy and cold and wanted nothing more than to just burrow into Jane's arms and never leave this office, since apparently it was the only safe place.

Maybe.

Instead, she had to settle for a warm kiss on her forehead and a quick embrace before Jane summoned the rest of the team. They seemed to be there in a matter of seconds, no doubt alarmed by the expression on the normally relaxed face of their resident consultant.

More than a little stunned, she let Jane do the talking, noting absently that he brushed aside any talking points that linked them together romantically.

By the end of the short re-telling, the rest of the team looked properly horrified.

"Shit, boss, breaking into your hotel room is one thing, but your apartment…" Rigsby trailed off, apparently unable to find the words to express how disturbed he was. It was okay – she was pretty sure she understood.

And now her brain was coping with the situation by using lots of sarcasm.

_Pull it together, Teresa_, she hissed at herself. Her life was in danger, and this was no time to have a breakdown.

It was just…well, she'd never been stalked this overtly by a massively powerful serial killer before, and she didn't know how to react.

"So what are we going to do?" Cho asked, looking for a practical solution to the problem they were faced with. She eagerly latched onto his words, thinking that actually _doing_ something would help her mental state.

"We're going to keep her apartment under constant surveillance, obviously," Grace said soberly. "And Lisbon herself, too."

"Not necessary," she said, finally. "I think we can all agree that if he wanted me dead at this point, I would be dead. Besides, all surveillance would do is give Red John someone else to watch, too."

For there was no doubt in her mind that there was always a pair of evil eyes locked firmly on her.

"Boss, we're not just going to let you go about your day like nothing happened," Rigsby protested. "That would be beyond stupid."

She ran a hand down her face. "Fine," she sighed. "If it makes you feel better, go to my place. Take a forensics team with you, and some people from tech. Sweep the place for evidence and prints, though you won't find anything. Ask the tech guys to check for bugs or other monitoring devices." A shiver tried to chase itself up her spine, but she set her jaw. "And keep an eye on everyone as best you can. Remember, we don't trust anyone outside of this room."

They all reflexively looked through the glass walls at the plethora of people on the Serious Crimes floor. Any one of them could be a confederate of Red John, and they had no idea.

It was something she and Jane hadn't really discussed – sure, one of the seven men on that list was Red John, but they had no way of knowing who he had managed to recruit. God, if it was Bertram or Haffner, there was almost no limit to who could have switched sides.

She followed the team out, Jane walking briskly beside her. They would be the first to arrive on scene, and that made sense. It was her apartment – there was good chance that if something had been tampered with, she would notice.

It seemed like a good moment to wish she was more of a neat freak. That would have made their job a lot easier.

Jane reached for her hand as soon as they were in the vehicle, and she needed the gesture, needed to feel physically connected with him.

"Do you think there's anything else there?" she asked quietly, hardly paying attention to the road.

"I don't know," he said. "There could be, but I doubt it. One grand gesture at a time, I think, is how Red John likes to work."

"I think I'm going to move when this is over," she said, almost to herself. "I doubt I'll ever be able to feel at peace there again."

He offered her a small smile. "Maybe go for somewhere with a bigger kitchen. I've seen compact cars that offer more counter space."

She was about to retort by saying she didn't need the space since she didn't cook, but then she realized they were having a conversation about kitchens as they both mentally wondered what California's most notorious serial killer had done to her apartment. The words died in her throat.

There were no marks on the doorknob to suggest someone had fiddled with it in their attempt to get in, and the deadbolt was still in place. Jane took her keys and unlocked the door as she drew her weapon, adrenaline already flowing through her veins.

The living room was bright, the blinds wide open. She couldn't remember if she'd left them that way or not. Jane's little visit had blurred her memory of much of the night before.

As she carefully made her way through the ground floor, opening closets and doors, she didn't think anything looked wrong.

She shivered on the stairs, remembering that she was about to walk the same path Red John had, just a matter of hours before.

She left the bedroom until last on purpose, checking the bathroom and the linen closet first. With a deep, silent breath, she nudged the door open, though her instincts told her there was no one here.

Her instincts were correct. Everything appeared to be precisely as she had left them that morning- sheets crumpled at the foot of the bed, her towel from the previous evening kicked off to the side of her closet door, her two pillows much closer together than usual.

Giving Jane a dubious look, she made herself peer more intently around the room, specifically near the clothes hamper. She opened the lid, and then experienced an unexpected bout of panic. Was she really going to touch the laundry Red John had just rifled through?

Helpfully, her mind supplied her with the excuse that she _shouldn't_ touch it – trace DNA from a stray hair that had fallen or _something_ could be there. Gratefully, she seized upon the idea.

From outside, she could hear the slamming doors that meant the team was arriving. She took another cursory glance around the room, thinking irrationally that everyone was going to know Jane spent the night here, though there was no physical trace of him.

"Anything?" he asked, still standing quietly at her side. He had reached out to rest a hand on her waist, steadying her.

"Not that I can see," she replied, "but I doubt Red John has come this far by being sloppy. I'll be anxious to know what the tech team comes up with."

They sat on the curb in the parking lot as the CBI agents went through the place. She had originally intended on staying inside, but it made her feel distinctly unsettled to watch complete strangers comb through her possessions.

"What's the next move?" she murmured once, absently watching another blue-jacketed man wander through the front door.

"For us?" Jane asked. "I think we try to see if we can eliminate anyone else from our list. I don't know if everyone left had the opportunity to break into your apartment between the hours of 7:30 and 2:30. It's somewhere to start."

She didn't even bring up the possibility that Red John could have sent another minion. There was no point – Jane knew it just as well as she did, and she didn't want to be the one to crush everyone's hope.

"I don't think I can stay here tonight," she said once, after a period of silence.

"I can't say that I blame you," he replied. Of course, this was coming from the man who occasionally slept in the room his wife had been murdered in, a smiley face painted in her blood looking down on him, so perhaps she shouldn't trust a thing that came out of his mouth.

"When the teams are done, I'm just going to get a bag and stay at a hotel," she continued, thinking out loud more than anything. "It's not like Red John won't be watching me anyway."

Carefully, discreetly, he rested his hand on top of hers. They were sitting close enough together that no casual observer would notice a thing. "If that's what you want," he said.

The sun was beginning to set when they received the all clear from inside her apartment. No evidence had been found of electronic bugging or surveillance, and forensics wasn't hopeful that they had pulled anything useful, either.

Jane lounged against the doorframe as she hastily threw some clothes together. Rigsby, Van Pelt, and Cho were in her living room, no doubt discussing their strategies for the night. She didn't intend to even bother telling them to go home; they weren't going to anyway. And, by the quick glance Grace had given her, _she_ at least knew that Jane was going to be by her side all night.

She requested a ground floor room in the nearest Marriot hotel, the theory being that it was well lit and well-travelled. Surely, someone would pick up on a serial killer trying to break into her room.

Without saying a word to her, Jane followed her inside the small space, flipping on the lights. It smelled like a hotel room.

The weight of the day suddenly came crashing down around her, and she nearly staggered under the burden. Today had seen a quiet morning waking up in Jane's arms, the murder of a Red John suspect, a confession from Kirkland they weren't sure they could believe, lunch with another potential suspect, and then the invasion of her home.

She sat, heavily, on the king sized bed, head in her hands.

Jane joined her, leaning back against the pillows. "Too bad you didn't get the room with the minibar," he commented.

"Was that an option?" she asked. "Because I don't think it's too late to change."

He chuckled, and there was no humor behind the sound. "I'm going to shower. I feel like I've been up for about two weeks, wearing the same clothes."

She understood the sensation very well. Her entire body felt worn out, wrung. All she wanted now was about six beers and a thorough bout of sex, specifically with Jane.

To that end, she stood outside the bathroom door for the first five minutes he was in the shower, seriously considering stripping down and joining him. What would he do – stop her? Hardly.

Then again, this was Jane, and he had some strange notions. She did understand where he was coming from, but she was suddenly struck with a different idea.

How long were they going to let Red John dictate how they lived their lives? The man had explicitly stated that he was going to change the rules. They weren't precisely sure how yet. There had been more deaths, true, but they had no idea if that was the extent of rules change or not.

Really, who knew how long they had left? And, if their time was indeed limited, did she want to spend what was left of it adhering to a certain behavior set because a goddamned serial killer told her to?

Making up her mind, she quickly shed her clothes and slipped inside the steamy bathroom. Jane hadn't bothered to lock the door.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled back the curtain and stepped underneath the hot water. To her surprise, Jane's waiting arms caught her immediately, pulling her close.

"I was wondering if you were ever going to make up your mind," he murmured, turning them sideways. Of course, he would have heard her as she deliberated outside. Damn him and his mentalist skills.

Almost angrily, she stretched onto her toes and kissed him roughly, her momentum pushing them both back against the shower wall.

He didn't resist, just widened his stance to balance both their weights better, arms locked firmly around her back.

A naked and wet Patrick Jane was something she had thought about more than a few times, but her fantasies had never managed to match the reality. Not even close, she now realized.

He gave her as much control as she wanted, which, at the moment, was all of it. She was just _so tired_ of not having a say in anything that happened in her life.

When he pulled back, she almost shrieked in frustration, and he laughed at her expression. "Don't worry, Teresa. I'm not going anywhere."

With sure movements, he reached for the shampoo bottle over her head and tugged her completely under the spray.

"Um, Jane?" she asked, hands sliding up his forearms. "This isn't what I had in mind."

He laughed again, eyes twinkling. "No kidding? I thought when you climbed in her naked you just wanted to chat. Silly me." He kissed her swiftly. "Humor me for just a little bit. Like I said, I'm not going anywhere."

She was going to protest, but then his fingers were in her hair, massaging her scalp, and she groaned loudly at the unexpected pleasure, head falling forward to rest against his shoulder.

If she was being honest, she couldn't remember the last time this had happened. It certainly must've, but she had no memory of someone taking care of her like this, seemingly perfectly content to simply tend to her needs. She had been doing things for herself for so long that it had just become second nature. She hadn't realized until this moment how tiring it was.

Jane shifted her so the water rinsed the shampoo out of her locks, carefully running his fingers through her hair, before reaching for the conditioner. She didn't move, fingers locked against his lower back.

When he was finished, he tilted her chin up for another kiss, tongue slipping lazily inside her mouth.

"Due to logistical issues," he murmured once, in between slow brushes of his lips, "would you mind if we took this outside? I don't want to be interrupted by slipping and breaking an ankle."

She smiled, really smiled, for the first time in what seemed like a month. "You mean a hip, old man?"

He nipped playfully at her ear. "Be careful, woman. I'll make you pay for comments like that."

The water stopped, and she stepped out into the humid bathroom, reaching for the standard white towel.

"Dry off," Jane whispered, very close to her face. "I'll be out in a minute."

She turned, kissing him again, then scuttled back into the room proper, hastily scrubbing her skin with the terry cloth.

Figuring she wasn't going to drip too badly, she slid beneath the sheets, remembering at the last second to turn off the lights.

Her scalp was still tingling from Jane's little massage. She absolutely couldn't believe how wonderful that had felt. It was like he knew exactly what to do to make her feel good, the sensation travelling to all her other weary body parts, making them calm and…heavy now…

After all, it had been a very long day…and…

She was asleep before he opened the bathroom door.

Which, of course, was exactly what he had intended.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN:** The first part of this sucker is probably rated M. Okay, so I don't think there's a _probably_ about it. So you can all stop with the death threats!

Thanks to everyone who reviewed…I am a horrible person and undeserving of your support, but thanks for it anyway! :)

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Eleven**

He felt like all he had done recently was keep himself together, and secondarily, keep Lisbon together. She took her cues from him, he knew, and so he had tried, very hard, to not give in to any of the panic and fear that seemed like it was constantly surrounding them.

It was only when she was asleep that he indulged in a few, brief moments of seriously contemplating how this could all end. Of course, it only took a second of that train of thought for him to be unable to sleep.

That was how it was now – he was lying next to her in the hotel bed, and he absolutely _should_ be out like a light. It had been an outrageously exhausting day, and he was more than entitled to crash.

Lisbon was wrapped up in the sheet, face relaxed for the first time in sixteen hours.

Speaking of control, he had definitely wondered if he was going to be strong enough when she jumped in the shower earlier, absolutely intent on having her way with him.

But she needed to rest, needed her body to recharge, more than she needed him. So he had sent her on her way to bed, promising to join her soon, hoping that by the time he left the bathroom, she would be sound asleep.

He had counted to one hundred, and then two hundred, and then conjugated all the Latin verbs he would remember, all the while ignoring the possibility that she would still be awake when he saw her again.

What would he have done then? Truthfully? He would have made love to her.

Thankfully, she was all but snoring, so he pulled on pajama bottoms and slid into bed beside her, staying on top of the sheet, while she was underneath it. There was, after all, only so much temptation a man could resist.

Before he had even settled himself properly, she had rolled in to the warmth of his body, and he opened his arms willingly. This was the unexpected silver lining he had found since Red John began his latest campaign.

That had been hours ago, and though she was still sprawled across him, he had yet to close his eyes.

Absently, he watched the digital clock on the bedside table, lost in thought as the numbers changed. Around midnight, Lisbon woke abruptly, pushing herself up.

It took her a moment to realize where she was, and, perhaps more importantly, who she was with and how she had gotten there.

"Hi," he whispered, smiling at her through the darkness.

She swatted his chest with an audible _smack_. "You son of a bitch," she hissed.

He was about to ask what she was talking about, but was denied the opportunity when she shoved the sheet back and climbed on top of him, kissing him fiercely.

Instinctively, his hands went to her waist, reveling in the soft skin he found there. Her own fingers were in his hair, keeping his mouth where it was, the tightness of her grip letting him know she had no intention of falling asleep again.

"Teresa," he managed to whisper in between deep, passion-filled kisses. "I told you-"

"Ask me if I care," she replied, voice forceful. "I'm not playing by his rules."

"You're not the only one playing this game," he said, forcing her to meet his eyes. They were deep, hazy. And then, utterly solemn.

"Patrick," she almost whispered, and he felt goosebumps rise at the use of his given name. "I know what's at stake. And I am not going to go to my death not knowing what this is like."

His heart contracted. "You're not going to your death, Lisbon, stop it."

She shook her head. "You can't promise me that, and we both know it. I've put everything I've felt for you on hold for almost ten years," she went on, "and I'm not going to live out what could be the last days of my life continuing to wait."

He opened his mouth to argue, but one of her small hand slipped inside the front of his pajama pants, and he groaned involuntarily. It was fairly obvious that he wanted this as much as she did.

Still, he felt like he should pull back, not wanting a conversation about her impending death to be their version of pillow talk.

"Teresa," he said again, but she shushed him roughly, soft mouth taking the place of her hand, and he was utterly robbed of his ability to speak.

His hands fisted in the sheets, eyes wrenched shut in pleasure. God, he had thought about this for so long…

Suddenly, she was gone, sliding up his body again, managing to completely divest him of his clothes without him noticing.

She wrapped her fingers around him again, guiding this time, and he saw stars as she lowered herself onto him.

This was not going at all like he imagined the first time would, but he was in absolutely no position to care.

He could feel her trembling as she waited for her body to adjust to its new fullness. Stupidly, distantly, he realized he had hardly touched her. His hands palmed her breasts, loving how she arched into his touch.

She leaned over him, breath coming in shallow pants. "Tell me you want this," she nearly begged, and he saw her desperation to know that his refusal to give into desire before now had nothing to do with how he felt about her.

He slid his fingers into her hair, kissing her softly this time. "I want you more than I want anything on this earth, Teresa. Don't ever doubt that."

She was silent, so he levered his hips upwards, and her mouth fell open in a surprised _o._ Recovering quickly, she lowered her hands to his shoulders, steadying herself before starting to search out a rhythm.

God, she was already on the edge, he could tell, so he let her set the pace, the angle, watching in absorbed fascination as she lost herself. As tightly as she was wound, it was just a matter of minutes before he felt her muscles tighten further around him, her hands pressing down on his chest as her body flushed and shivered.

Before she had even come down all the way, he rolled her to her back, kissing her deeply before finding his own rhythm inside her willing body.

As much as he had fantasized about this, even his nimble mind hadn't come close to the reality. He felt drunk, almost dizzy with pleasure. In a minute or two, Lisbon came alive beneath him again, limbs wrapping around him, drawing him closer, deeper, matching him thrust for thrust.

Impossibly, her muscles tightened again, and he shattered just after she did, trembling with the force of his release.

They lay in a tangle of bodies and sheets for God knew how long after, his face pressed against her neck, lips resting on her thundering pulse. Her hands moved abstractly over his body, fingers trailing from the small of his back up to the damp curls at the nape of his neck over and over.

Eventually, he pushed himself up on one elbow, smiling at her rosy cheeks. "Tell me again why I tried to stop this," he requested, "because I'm damned if I can remember."

She chuckled in an exhausted manner, looking like she was thinking about smacking him again but simply lacked the energy to do so.

He wanted to say something, to convey to her how much this had meant, how long he had wanted this, had dreamt about being with her that way, but he didn't want to ruin the lightness of this moment with more heavy thoughts. Besides, he thought she already knew. Regardless, he would tell her soon anyway.

Shifting, he pulled her into his arms, both of them under the sheets this time.

Despite the darkness of his earlier thoughts, it took no time at all for Lisbon's warm, sated weight to pull him under, and he slept dreamlessly for the next few hours.

When he woke, it was slowly, languidly, and it took him a few seconds to recall all that had happened. When he did, he smiled, instinctively searching out for Lisbon.

His hands only found the empty sheets.

Startled, he sat up, heart beating wildly until he saw her perched in the arm chair in the corner, clad in his half-buttoned dress shirt, legs curled up beneath her.

"What are you doing?" he asked, voice coming out louder than he'd intended.

She shrugged. "Just thinking."

He let out a breath, running his hands down his face. "Can you think from here? You scared the hell out of me."

Her smile was indulgent, and she slowly walked back to the edge of the bed, bare feet making almost no noise on the carpet.

He curled against her, his front to her back, planting a soft kiss on the edge of her neck. There was new tension in her body, and he sighed, knowing that whatever they did from here on out was going to be edged in shades of red until the bastard was caught. He had tried to avoid this level of intimacy with Lisbon because of that fact, but now that they were here, he wouldn't take back any of it.

"Don't tell me it'll be alright," she demanded, fingers tangling with his.

"Fine," he agreed, nuzzling closer still, freeing one of his hands to slowly undo the buttons on her…his…shirt.

"Ahem," she said, a note of amusement in her tone. "What are you up to now?"

He smiled. "Making you feel better."

And he did, for what remained of the night.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The morning came too soon for either of their likings, wrapped up in blankets and each other. Jane also made it very difficult for Lisbon to get ready, constantly distracting her with kisses. Although she yelled at him half-heartedly several times, her spontaneous grins were more than enough incentive to continue.

He would give almost anything for every day to begin in such a manner, but that was a dream out of his reach, at least for now.

Rigsby met them in the lobby, and he noted that Lisbon turned bright red when she spoke to the younger man. Did she wonder if Rigsby had some sort of inkling of what they had done the night before? She needn't have worried – the man was really very bad at that sort of thing.

Cho and Grace, however, surely were going to know, especially if Lisbon kept blushing such an interesting color.

"Nothing new happened last night," Rigsby reported, taking a sip of coffee.

"Thank God for that," Lisbon muttered. "Entirely too much happened yesterday. We deserve a little bit of a break to work on the cases we have instead of new ones popping up."

The CBI was buzzing. First, they had lost a crime scene tech, then the head of the SCU division had been blatantly threatened. People were edgy, and that nervousness was finding its way into every corner of the building.

Gale Bertram was waiting in Lisbon's office when they arrived, which he took as a very bad omen. Bertram never came here, preferring instead to let the underlings come to him.

He felt Lisbon tense when she spotted her boss, and he figured she didn't need a confrontation with a potential Red John suspect this early in the morning, but some things couldn't be helped.

To his surprise, Bertram hugged her as soon as she walked in the door. Looking immensely disquieted, Lisbon patted the man on the back once before letting go.

"I heard what happened," Bertram said, "at your apartment. Christ, Teresa, what the hell is going on?"

There were two ways Jane could have interpreted this reaction. One of them was correct, and one was not, but he still had no idea which. If Bertram was innocent, then he was just genuinely concerned for Lisbon's well-being. And, if he was a serial killer, he was phenomenally good at acting.

"Honestly, sir," Lisbon said, taking a seat behind her desk, "I really have no idea." She was getting good at answering questions honestly while still being vague, he noted.

"I'm tempted to take you off this case and give it to the FBI," Bertram said. "You don't need this psycho going after you."

Lisbon shook her head. "Sir, with all due respect, I think we're beyond that now. I'd like to keep this case."

Bertram gave her a long, measuring look, then sighed in resignation. "Fine, Teresa. You're still on it – for now. But if I feel things are getting too dangerous for you and your team, I won't hesitate to call in some more firepower."

She nodded. "Thank you for your concern, sir."

He left them, and Lisbon's shoulder's visibly slumped.

"I am so sick of this," she whispered as soon as they were alone. "Sick of suspecting everyone. This has got to end."

"It's going to," he promised. "Soon."

She took a deep breath. "Not soon enough, Jane. We need to stop letting Red John dictate the terms, stop waiting for him to make the next move. It's way past time for us to start taking some preemptive action."

"Oh, I agree," he said, wondering where she was going with this. "The problem is, I can't figure out _what_."

Something sparked behind her eyes, some half formed idea, but before she could say anything, Cho knocked on the office door.

"Van Pelt says she found something. We have to meet her at the public library in a half hour." It was impossible to tell that Cho had spent half the night sitting in a hotel lobby, drinking bad coffee.

"The library?" Lisbon echoed.

"She was doing research on Partridge," Cho explained, "and wanted to keep it off CBI servers, just in case."

"Whatever she's found," Jane said, "tell her to make multiple copies of it and try to cover her tracks."

"Yeah, she said you'd say that," the other man said. "And she said it's already done."

Smiling a little now, Jane sat back in his chair. If anyone could hide what she'd been up to on a computer, it would be Grace.

"You know this is going to look suspicious as hell, yes?" Lisbon verified. "All of us just leaving in the middle of the day?"

"Fair point," he conceded. "Cho, call Van Pelt back and tell her to meet us at that diner we all ate at last week in a couple of hours. Having a group lunch isn't particularly suspicious." That was true, and though they used to do it much more than now, it wasn't likely to raise any huge red flags.

Everyone had more than enough to do, even him, to make the morning go by quickly. Lisbon was reviewing footage, Rigsby was going through statements, and Cho was checking on the backgrounds of the people that lived in Lisbon's apartment complex. All of this was normal, expected work to do after the events of the night before.

Grace was waiting for them at the small diner, looking very impatient, drink already in front of her.

"What's up?" Lisbon asked as soon as she sat down.

"I did some digging," the agent said quickly, "mostly involving the sites Jane found on Partridge's computer. He was involved with a bunch of message boards and online communities, most of them having to do with a variety of nasty things. Jane wasn't far off when he made that little Fangoria comment."

"Well, no surprises there," he said. "What else?"

"There's a Red John fan site out there," she continued, looking mildly disgusting. "It's run by some kid in Santa Barbara, living in his mother's basement, but there's a message board on the site, too."

Everyone sat up a little straighter.

"I managed to hack into Partridge's user account," she said, "and he had a lot of private messages from a user named Ironsmile98. From what I gathered, the two met several times. Now, Partridge never used the other person's name in any of these messages, but he did reference several Red John cases that cropped up over the years."

Jane waited, knowing more was coming soon.

"The tone of the messages started to change over time, too," she said. "It seemed like Partridge was addressing a superior instead of a peer." Grace handed him a few printouts, and he quickly scanned them.

"Can you track the other guy, the Ironsmile guy?" he asked, not having any idea how, exactly, that sort of thing was done.

"That's where things get really interesting," she said. "I can, to a certain extent. I traced the ip address to a fake company located in Santa Monica. No surprise there. But I used a couple of new tricks I learned, and found out that the person who registered the company was named Wes Strohman. And, although he did a good job of covering it up, Wes Strohman changed his name in 2002 to Eric Jennings, who is a member of Visualize."

There was silence around the table as they worked out the implications.

Rigsby was the first to speak. "Shit."

"Well put," Jane said.

"So Visualize is hiding Red John," Cho said.

"It would seem so," Jane said, "but that's not terribly shocking. After all, Brett Stiles always seemed to know much more than your average bear about what Red John was doing. He tipped us off about Kristina Frye, remember? But I suppose it's certainly possible that Red John is using Visualize resources, or that he at least used to be. When was the last message to Partridge?" he asked.

Grace thumbed through her papers. "Uh, about two years ago, actually, just saying that he should use the other method of communication they'd discussed."

Jane sighed. It was time to let them in on another secret. "Remember the Elliston Farm case?"

"The barn with the Red John smiley on it," Cho said. "Sure."

"I have every reason to think that the two bodies we found there were some of Red John's first victims, and that the smiley face there was his first official calling card. All of this happened when Elliston was being run by Visualize."

"So even if he's not now," Rigsby thought out, "at one time Red John was a member of Visualize. And," he went on, "let me guess. They're not giving you're their membership records."

"You're batting 1000," Jane told him.

There was another few minutes of silence. "So, what now?" Lisbon eventually asked.

"We do what we should have done months ago," he said. "We break into Visualize and get those records ourselves."

Lisbon snorted, then saw that he was serious. "Right," she muttered. "Because what could possibly go wrong there?"

Many things, none of which he preferred to think about. But it was time for action. Those records could help him eliminate more suspects from his list, and the fewer the better. It would be a veritable gold mine of information.

He just had to make sure they didn't get caught.


	12. Chapter 12

**AN:** Wait, did I actually respond to all of the signed reviews for Chapter 11? I think I did! I must be ill! And if I missed someone, I'm so sorry!

This is the part where I tell you again that I may or may not have some of these same theories about what's going to happen on the show. At the end of this, I might tell you what I actually think, but we'll see. ;)

And…please go check out Boy Wonder! The lovely Donna and I have worked very hard on it, and it's definitely some of our best writing. Don't get hung up on the fact that it's Jane/Angela – I promise you won't be disappointed! In fact, you just might like it!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Twelve**

When this was all over, Lisbon absently thought to herself, she was going to take a vacation. A very long one, in which she did nothing other than sit on a beach all day and drink brightly colored cocktails. At this point, she wasn't even sure if she would invite Jane along.

They were going to break into Visualize and steal their personnel records. It seemed like the most ridiculous idea in the world, considering all the luck they'd had in the past when it came to illegally garnering information from that particular cult.

But Jane had concluded that this was what they were doing, so she had buckled her proverbial seatbelt and held on.

She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that once he had robbed a casino after planning the heist for a mere five hours. It didn't work.

The whole team had been holed up in her office for the vast majority of the afternoon, poring over records and hastily compiled blueprints and sketches of Visualize's main building. They had narrowed their options down to the four rooms that they felt had the most potential for holding what they wanted.

"When are we going to make our play?" Rigsby asked once, looking up from a badly drawn map of the lobby.

"Two days from now," Jane replied, sketching intently. "They're holding some sort of open house, so there's going to be a lot more people there than normal. We want all the distraction we can get."

"Wait, we're doing this in the daytime?" Cho asked, brows furrowed.

"It'll be a lot easier than doing it at night," Jane told him. "A few people going in the wrong direction during a public event doesn't look nearly as suspicious as a few people breaking and entering after visiting hours are over."

He had a point there, but Lisbon still thought the cover of darkness would make her feel better. Then again, maybe it wouldn't. She didn't trust the dark lately. Of course, she didn't trust the light much either.

She caught herself thinking of white sand and flip flops again, and supposed that meant she hadn't completely resigned herself to dying in the next few days.

Once, she glanced up to catch Jane looking at her with heat in his eyes, and she knew that he was thinking about the night before.

Quickly averting her gaze, she felt a blush heat her cheeks. Since they'd arrived at work that morning, she'd honestly not had much time to go over what had happened.

God, she wondered what had gotten into her. She had basically held the man down and had her way with him. Then again, Jane hadn't put up too much of a fight. Especially the third and fourth times.

She allowed herself thirty seconds to relieve some of her favorite parts – his fingers brushing against her skin, the ridiculous things he could do with his mouth, the warmth of his exhausted body. The way he said her name.

For ten years, she had been dreaming about it, and now she knew. There was some comfort in that. Naturally, her fantasies hadn't come close to matching the reality, the true emotional punch that being with Jane in that way would pack.

It was far beyond physical.

She wondered if he felt the same way. Yes, he had admitted to wanting her, to caring, but she didn't have the confirmation she was really seeking. To know that he really did love her the way she loved him. To know that she wasn't some second place prize in lieu of his wife.

But those thoughts hurt too much, so she focused herself back on their plans, all the while thinking it would be a miracle if they all came out of this alive.

Around four that afternoon, the team went back to the bullpen to wind down from the day. Planning a massive scheme didn't leave much time to check e-mails.

Jane brought her another cup of coffee and was just settling on the couch when Robert Kirkland knocked on the door.

Mentally, she braced herself, silently cursing everything in sight.

Kirkland sat without waiting for permission.

"Lisbon, Jane," he said by way of greeting. "Sorry for not calling ahead, but the past twenty four hours have been quite busy." Now that she looked closer, she saw that Kirkland hadn't shaved and that his shirt was wrinkled. She knew the signs of a man who hadn't slept, mainly thanks to all the time she spent with Jane.

"Any leads with the break in?" Jane asked politely, though she was sure he was very interested in the answer.

Kirkland took a deep breath, looking like he was about to reveal something unpleasant.

"The break in was in my office, specifically," Kirkland said. "I had some things stored on an external hard drive, things related to the Red John case, not uploaded on the DHS server." His eyes shifted to Jane, who looked unreadable even to her trained eye. "Nothing else was taken. As you might have guessed, this particular turn of events disturbs me greatly."

"I see," she said, thinking hard again. Should they believe him? Or was he playing them?

"_Bobby_," Jane broke in, "please forgive my skepticism, but you haven't exactly proven to me that the little backstory you gave me was true."

Kirkland turned directly towards him, and something change in his posture.

"Naturally, Boy Wonder," he said, and it was Jane's turn to sit up straighter. His past wasn't exactly top secret, but there were not very many people who knew about where he had come from.

"You were a legend, you know," Kirkland said, words coming faster. "I saw you perform a couple of times, and you almost made a believer out of me, even though I knew the whole thing was a farce. You would hardly recognize him," he told her, still not looking in her direction. "He was eighteen and flashy and an expert at fleecing the half-drunk locals."

Jane's brows furrowed, and he appeared to be rapidly coming to a few conclusions. "What was your gig?" he finally asked.

Kirkland's smile was unsettling. "My parents ran the carousels and a few ring toss games. Of course, that doesn't take any particular skill, and so we weren't exactly in high demand. We never stayed with one show for long."

She remembered how, weeks ago, he told her he liked to say that he grew up in America. That all made sense now.

"But you," he went on, "you were something else. You could have ruled the world. Could have been the biggest fish in our little pond. But then you walked away from everything. Hell, I could hardly believe it. I would have given anything to be where you were."

There was a moment of charged silence. Then, "As interesting as that all was, you still haven't given me anything to work with," Jane said.

"True enough" Kirkland conceded. "I'll be brief – I had no talent for the carnie lifestyle, and I had no interest in it after I realized that. By the time I left, a few years after you did, I was acting as security, and I wondered if I could make a career out of it."

He shifted back in his chair. "I met my wife when I was in college. When I graduated, I went to the academy and joined the Burbank PD."

From the look on Jane's face, he had started to see where this story was headed. She wished she did, too.

"My third year on the force, we caught our first Red John case. It was his third known victim, enough that we were all comfortable calling him a serial killer." He took a moment to think. "Red John wasn't as good then as he was now. He was sloppier, still new to his trade. He made mistakes, big enough mistakes that we had a halfway decent lead to follow."

Kirkland's expression darkened. "I was so damn eager to prove to everyone that I was smart, that I could catch this guy. Long story short, I got far too close, and I was punished."

"I don't remember anyone with the last name of Kirkland being a Red John victim," Jane said, but softer this time, like he recognized something in the other man's face.

"Because it was never proven that it was Red John who did it," Kirkland told them, a wry smile twisting his face. "It had none of his hallmarks, no smiley face, the cutting pattern was entirely different. The police wrote it off as a B & E gone wrong. But I knew better." He was very quiet now, lost in his memories. "Six months later, I got an anniversary card in the mail. No signature, just a smiley face."

The story had struck a nerve with Jane; she could tell, and she remembered the card he had gotten last year, the card that had set his horrible plan to go to Vegas in motion.

"So how did you get from that point to this?" she asked, realizing she needed to steer the conversation for a bit.

Kirkland turned back towards her. "The man killed my wife, Agent Lisbon. There was no way I was going to sit around and let him get away with it. But I had enough sense to know it wasn't going to happen with the Burbank police department. So I joined the FBI, but transferred to DHS after it was formed."

She blinked. "There's nothing about your wife in your file," she said, trying to tie up some lose ends.

"Because I made sure there wasn't anything," he answered. "It's not the easiest thing in the world, making information go away, but I imagine it was a quicker process for me than it was for Jane to hide his time in the institution."

"How the hell did you know about that?" Jane asked, abruptly coming back to life.

"I always kept tabs on the Red John case," Kirkland said, "and I paid especially close attention when you got brought into this whole nightmare. Like I said, I had known who you were, knew that you were so damn intelligent it was almost scary, and I thought if anyone had a shot at figuring out who this guy was now, it would be you."

A thoughtful silence descended on her office, and she took a sip of her now-cold coffee just for something to do with her hands. God, like they needed any more to deal with. But if Jane believed Kirkland…well, that was one more person off the list.

"Why are you just showing up now?" she asked. "Why did you wait until Tommy Volker was on my radar to make yourself known?"

Kirkland sighed, looking like he hoped she wasn't going to ask that question. "Because I was investigating the possibility that Volker had a link to Red John. After all, the man clearly has money. It has to come from somewhere."

She swallowed. "And? Does he? Have a link, I mean."

He shrugged. "I wasn't able to determine that fully. You forced him to start covering his tracks like a mad man, killing off witnesses and potential sources of information. That's why I didn't want you involved."

There was a massive headache starting to develop behind her eyes. When Kirkland laid it all out, the odd pieces of his story started to settle into place. It seemed impossible, but he had answered all of their questions with reasonable responses.

"When I realized that Jane was getting close to having a breakthrough," he went on, "I started getting a little more actively involved. That's why DHS ran the search for Lorelei Martins. I hacked her file, created a link to a terrorist group…that's what got us on the investigation."

Finally, an answer to _that_ question.

Kirkland's phone buzzed, and he checked the message impatiently, frowning deeply. "I need to go now," he said, rising suddenly, "but please believe what I've told you. I want Red John dead as much as you do."

He left then, leaving her staring at Jane, bewildered. "What the hell was that?" she asked as soon as the door was closed.

Jane pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "Either he's telling the truth or he's some sort of super sociopath that doesn't tell me anything with his body langue."

She frowned. "So you don't think he's lying."

"Honestly?" He met her eyes. "No."

"Shit," she breathed.

Jane chuckled humorlessly. "This is probably a good thing. Scratch that – this is definitely a good thing. We have another ally." He uncrossed his legs. "I'm not saying we should bring him in on our plan, or even that I remotely trust him, for that matter. I'm just saying that I don't think he's Red John, or that he's working for him."

"Down to four," she muttered. Then, louder, "Jane, what are we going to do when we figure out who Red John actually is? Go haring after him with guns blazing?"

His smile was very enigmatic, and it made her nervous. "Let's just figure out who he is first. I know you'll need proof, so we'll find it."

"And then?" she prompted, realizing too late that she might not want to know the answer to her question.

"Then we'll see," was all he said.

They left not long after that. When she stood, she could feel an ache in her lower back. The stress she had been under was starting to take a physical toll. Distantly, she wondered how long it would be before she collapsed.

And she still wasn't sure if the revelation about Kirkland made her more or less anxious.

She checked into the hotel again, unwilling to face her apartment. Tomorrow, she thought, if she had five minutes to spare, she was going to start looking for new places. Then again, perhaps that was a bad idea. If Red John was watching her browsing history, he would probably just do something to every potential new home she searched out.

Just like the night before, Jane followed her inside without asking. While she was in the shower, he ordered Italian, and they ate halfway decent lasagna as they watched mindless sitcoms, her wet hair trailing down her back.

When the meal was over, he flipped the television off and led her to the bed without saying a word.

It was worlds different than the first time.

Jane took control and she let him, confident now that he wasn't going to try to pull back or do something equally ridiculous. He made love to her in slow degrees until she was nearly sobbing, hips shifting restlessly and urgently.

Only then did he give her what they both desired so much, starbursts exploding behind her eyes, his whispered groans in her ears.

After, she wasn't sure she had the ability to move or speak. He hauled her against his chest, and she laid there limply, perfectly content to never leave the bed again.

Maybe it was just because she was under so much stress, or maybe just because it was Jane, but she had never been as exhausted after sex as she had been the past two nights. Then again, she knew this wasn't _just_ sex.

He had given in, almost all the way. She knew there were parts of himself that he was holding back, waiting for the right time, for when he was free. But she had his trust, was almost sure she had his love, at least in some capacity, and she was certainly the only one who had his body.

It seemed she had much to be thankful for.

Of course, it would be easier to remember to be grateful if she wasn't so scared that this was all going to end.

Jane thought she was Red John's final play, his crowning jewel if they let the game get far enough along. She utterly detested being a pawn, something to be used for Jane's destruction. Her first instinct was to simply start threatening suspects until someone came clean, but she knew that would never work.

Red John hadn't come this far by crumbling under pressure.

No, she needed to think of something more, some sort of a better plan, in case they didn't find what they were looking for at Visualize. If she was to make herself an easy target, put herself in the line of fire, so to speak, would Red John be able to resist?

She didn't know, and the thought of deliberately putting herself in the hands of a serial killer terrified her so much that she nearly choked.

As a cop, she had seen some of the worst crimes humans were capable of committing, and seen them on a daily basis. If she thought about them too long, she would go completely crazy, so she had learned to compartmentalize, to put the violence aside and get on with her life.

It was all different now that it was directed at her though. The old fear, the idea that true monsters walked the earth had started to come back. There were evil people in the world, and one of them was watching her.

She shivered lightly, curling further into Jane's embrace. He ran a sleepy hand through her hair, and she focused on his heartbeat. She needed to think of better things or she would never sleep tonight.

Naturally, her new relationship with Jane came to mind almost immediately. That was definitely something that could distract her.

So was sex the key? Physicality?

God, if she would have had any idea _that_ would have worked, the poor man would have found himself shoved against an elevator wall at least five years ago.

Grinning gently to herself, she drifted off, happy scenarios of a compliant Patrick Jane playing through her mind.


	13. Chapter 13

**AN:** Sorry for the delays with posting – I know I usually post every other day, but that's just not working out for me this summer.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! You guys rocked!

On a side note, Donna and I have finished "Boy Wonder," so if you haven't checked it out, please do so. We're both very proud of how it turned out. And, if you just can't bring yourself to read it, Donna and I are planning on working together again in the future…this time on a Jane and Lisbon story, so stop worrying!

Alright – no more from me. On to the story!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Thirteen**

To his total lack of surprise, he couldn't sleep. He sighed, sounding annoyed, and shifted his hold on Lisbon, careful to not wake her slumbering form. God knew she needed the rest.

It seemed like she slept like a log after each time they made love, as though she put her entire heart and soul into the act until she had no more to give. Which, he realized, she probably did. The idea was touching, and he felt his heart contract.

The clock on the bedside table told him it was past two in the morning. Officially, then, they were going to break into Visualize the next day. He had tried to keep up his confidence for the team, but he was definitely smart enough to realize that this was a caper of epic proportions, and they needed everything to go right _and_ a miracle for it to work.

If they were caught, Red John would know what they were trying to do, and Jane doubted the records they wanted would be around for much longer. Of course, he wondered if they hadn't been destroyed already. It wasn't like this was the first time they had tried to get a hold of the membership rosters.

Everything was still looking very sketchy. He wished he had some sort of plan B, some backup scheme to make things run more smoothly. Hell, he didn't even care if he was seen on security cameras. As long as he could get his hands on the right information, he would willingly go to jail for trespassing or breaking and entering or whatever he was slapped with. He'd probably wind up serving the sentence for that concurrently with the murder charge he was anticipating.

Despite what he said, despite what Lisbon thought, he simply didn't see this ending in any other way than him pulling a trigger.

That was another reason he had tried to avoid what had happened between them. He knew there was a good possibility he would end up behind bars at the end of this quest for revenge, and it wouldn't be fair to her. She would be loyal, he knew that, but he despised the thought of her sitting around waiting for the next, oh, thirty years. Perhaps less, if he behaved himself.

Still, it wasn't what he wanted for her. Selfishly though, if he could redo the past few days, he didn't think he'd change it, didn't think he'd make a different choice. They had been walking this path for most of a decade now, and if anything was fated, this was. Not that he believed in such things, but it seemed like a nice idea.

An idea struck him suddenly, and it was so perfect that he wondered why it had taken him so long to come up with it. He had come to the conclusion that Robert Kirkland wasn't Red John, wasn't working for him, either. So why not use the man? The Department of Homeland Security certainly had a lot more clout than the CBI.

Fake religion or not, he would love to see Visualize try to dodge the DHS. They would just have to make sure no one tipped their hand, which was hard to do, especially since many more people than he thought kept turning out to be members of Stiles' little cult.

It was decided then – as soon as it was an acceptable hour of the day, he was calling Kirkland to ask a favor. He wondered what the other man would want in return. Whatever it was, it was probably worth it.

He was a little bothered that he could remember him from his time on the carnival circuit, but it wasn't all that surprising. There were people joining up and leaving at every stop. Besides, when he was eighteen, all he was concerned about was making money and finding a willing pair of arms. He was fairly good at both things, but it didn't leave much time for anything else, like striking up conversations with random people running a ring-toss game.

It wasn't like there would be records, either, and he didn't know how to get a hold of anyone who would remember Kirkland. He would just have to trust his instincts. Well, they had gotten him this far.

Four names left on his list. Tomorrow, it would hopefully be whittled down even more. Haffner would still be there, he knew already. Who would join him? Would anyone? He could hear the blood start to thrum in his veins. Every second that passed was a second closer to finding out who the son of a bitch was. And putting him in the ground.

Lisbon shifted against him, and he ran a soothing hand down her back. Tomorrow afternoon couldn't possibly come soon enough.

After managing to doze fitfully for a few hours, he woke to the smell of coffee brewing. Lisbon was half-dressed, looking in various bags for items she needed, and, as far as he could tell, quietly swearing under her breath.

"Good morning, sunshine," he said cheerfully.

"I hate living out of suitcases," she said by way of reply. "I miss all of my stuff being in one place."

There wasn't much he could say. He was used to never really having a place for anything, so this hotel stay wasn't all that bothersome. It definitely had a better bathroom than the CBI gym, that was for sure.

"Hopefully everything will be able to make a return to something approaching normalcy soon," he finally remarked.

She looked skeptical, and he couldn't blame her.

When they got to work, he decided that letting Lisbon in on his plans for Kirkland wasn't the best idea. She still didn't trust him, and he didn't want her to balk. So he waited until she went back for her third cup of coffee before scrolling through the contacts on her cellphone.

Excusing himself, he nearly ran up to the attic, dialing the number as he walked. Kirkland answered on the second ring.

Quickly, Jane related the bare outline of his knowledge, purposefully not telling the DHS agent all the details. Just because he was (probably) not a serial killer was no reason to divulge everything he knew. Hell, he trusted Lisbon implicitly and _she_ still didn't know everything.

When he told Kirkland his idea, there was a lengthy pause.

Finally, "You're sure this is going to help you catch Red John? You're not just doing this because you don't like Visualize?"

Jane almost laughed. "Kirkland, if I put this much effort into screwing with everyone I didn't like, I'd have no time to solve actual crimes."

Another round of silence. "Okay," and the tone of his voice told Jane the deal was sealed, "I think this is a terrible idea, for the record, but I'll do it. Just give me the specifics."

Jane rattled off the memorized times and locations.

"Fine," Kirkland said, "I'll make it happen, but I do have one condition."

"I'd be shocked if you didn't," Jane replied.

"When you find out who the son of a bitch is, you don't go to the police. You come to me." There was a coldness in his tone that Jane recognized, having dealt with the same sense of vengeance for the past ten years.

"When I found out who he is," Jane echoed, "I will do everything in my power to make sure the proper sort of revenge is taken." The words were vague, but Kirkland was going to have to live with that.

Truthfully, if he really knew who Red John was, he doubted he would tell Lisbon. She would try to talk him out of what he needed to do, or get law enforcement agencies involved, and there simply wasn't going to be time for that. When Red John was made, there needed to be instant action or they would lose him.

"Fair enough," Kirkland conceded. "See you tomorrow."

The call went dead then, and Jane let out a breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding. Things were starting to get put in motion.

Lisbon looked at him questioningly when he returned to her office, but he avoided her eyes, instead working on their plans for the next day. There were a few things that needed to be changed now that Kirkland was coming on board. Of course, no one else knew that yet.

Her phone rang in the early afternoon, and he felt his hear sink. If he was a praying man, he would be begging God for the assistant AG to not be on the other line, telling them there was another Red John victim.

Of course, simply for that reason, it was the assistant AG, telling them there was another Red John victim.

His joints ached as he stood, and not for the first time, he realized he was getting older. The stress he was constantly under did not help the aging process, either.

He was quiet as they drove to the city of Paradise, wondering what poor innocent person had to die this time because he wasn't smart enough. According to Lisbon, there had been no ID found with the body, no identifying markers, either. All the assistant AG had told her was that their victim was a woman in her early 40s, which didn't narrow the field down very much.

However, she clearly thought that he was going to know precisely who it was.

He thought that same thing, too, and it was not comforting.

Paradise was situated near the edge of a national park, fraught with rental properties and tourist shops. Still, it wasn't particularly large, nothing on the scale of Sacramento, so it didn't taken them long to see the trail of police vehicles that led them to their latest crime scene.

It was a rental cabin, officially outside of the city limits, but close enough that it was regularly seen. For clearly, Red John wanted the body to be found.

Lisbon walked into the cabin's small bedroom at his side, eyes going first to the painted face above the bed, then to the body draped in plastic.

With a customary deep breath, he pulled the sheet back.

It was Erica Flynn.

Lisbon recognized her at the same time he did, and he could feel her shock.

While he had always sort of hoped to run into Erica again, it was never under such circumstances. She was clever enough that he very much enjoyed matching his mind against hers; indeed, she read people almost the same way he did, and he'd always thought that if she got tired of the matchmaking scheme (or prison), she would make a pretty good psychic.

The kiss they had shared was something he had pushed to the back of his mind. She was a master manipulator, that was all, and he had been arrogant enough to think himself above such petty tactics. As it turned out, he wasn't.

And his thoughts all seemed supremely pointless now, as he looked down at her sightless eyes, locked forever in an expression of perpetual fear.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, even though she couldn't hear him, now or ever.

They didn't spend much time at the scene. He knew Lisbon was practically bursting with questions, and he didn't want to answer them until they were alone. Besides, he knew precisely what they would find here – not a thing.

"I was never involved with her, not really," he said, perhaps ten minutes after they'd left. She hadn't asked, but he knew what was foremost on her mind.

"Not really?" she echoed. "What does that mean?"

He sighed. Poor choice of words on his part. "Full disclosure, Lisbon: I kissed her. Once, and only once."

From her seat beside him, he could see Lisbon's eyebrows rise so far they near disappeared into her hair.

"That was it," he went on. "Yes, I mentally enjoyed sparring with her, and yes, I thought she was beautiful, but that was it. She wasn't anyone really special to me."

Lisbon blinked. "You kissed her, Jane. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that definitely made her someone special. She was the first time you'd been remotely intimate with someone since your wife. Well, when you were in you right mind," she tacked on, and he knew she was thinking of the time he'd spent in a fugue state.

"I suppose," he admitted slowly. "Of course, that begs the question of how Red John knew what happened."

"The freaking man knows everything," Lisbon muttered, more to herself than to him. He wondered if she had just decided Red John knew about their change in relationship status. But then something else came to mind.

No, he really, truly didn't care especially about Erica Flynn. He had enjoyed flirting with her, and that was it. In the end, she had _still_ murdered her husband. There was nothing romantic or soft about his attraction to her.

Red John had made another mistake. He was equating physical intimacy to affection. It was another clue, but he needed to think about it a little longer before coming to any real conclusions.

Lisbon fell silent well before they reached Sacramento, and he knew she was brooding. Unexpectedly, he wanted to smirk – was this their first fight as a couple?

But there was no time for that – they had last minute plans to lay in preparation for tomorrow. The team arrived a few hours after they did, and everyone checked and double checked where they were supposed to be the next day.

At the hotel that night, he discovered it wasn't the most difficult task in the world to get Lisbon to let go of her anger. He just needed to trip the correct proverbial triggers, and she was screaming, though definitely not from rage.

"I swear," he whispered once, "I never wanted her. It's always been you."

She didn't answer, but her arms locked around his neck, and her lips against his told him he was forgiven.

They were both awake far too early the next morning, nerves getting the better of them.

At one o'clock that afternoon, the entire team descended on the Visualize headquarters, armed with the excuse that they had found a link between Brett Partridge and the pseudo-religion. It was thin, he knew it, but he just hoped it was enough to get them in the doors.

Jason Cooper greeted them not ten minutes after they'd arrived. "Ah," he said. "I was wondering when I'd be graced with the honor of your presence again. It's been, what…six months? Probably time to start accusing us of crimes again."

Jane smiled, and it was partly because he had just noticed the small convoy of black SUVs pulling up the driveway, flashing lights and government plates being put to full effect. "Well, if the members of your little…religion…here would stop winding up dead or stop being linked to murders, you wouldn't need to see nearly so much of us."

They danced around the topic for a few minutes, Jane deliberately stalling for time while he waited for Kirkland to do his thing. It didn't take long at all; whatever DHS was saying was very potent.

Cooper was pulled away, and out the window, he could see the residents of the campus being evacuated. They weren't going to get a better shot.

"Let's go," he said hurriedly, grabbing Lisbon's arm and motioning for the rest of the team to follow.

"Now?" Cho asked. "What's going on out there?"

"Just a distraction," he said, "trust me."

The hallways were almost chaos. There was an open house going on, so there were a vast number of civilians here, too, and most of them had no idea where they were walking.

They all split in their designated directions when they reached the main hallway, slipping into side corridors. About that time, the fire alarm went off, furthering what was rapidly becoming pandemonium.

The people around him thinned out as he went deeper into the heart of the Visualize building. He had been this way only once before, and he hadn't stayed very long.

Lisbon was still at his side, but she split left when they came to the next intersection in the hall. "Good luck," he barely whispered, watching her hair swing as she ducked out of sight.

He followed this path, mentally checking landmarks off in his mind. He was getting close to a room he needed to check, and he started rummaging in his pockets, sure he was going to need to pick the lock on the door.

From behind him, he thought he heard a soft scream, but he couldn't be sure. Still, he looked worriedly over his shoulder, an eerie feeling coming over him. There was no time to worry about that now.

The door he had been searching for appeared abruptly on his left, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

Like he'd predicted, the door was locked. There was no keypad, however, or other means of security. It made him nervous – he didn't think the higher ups in Visualize were that trusting. Or stupid.

He picked the lock anyway, slowly turning the handle. The room was dark, and he groped for the light switch on the wall.

Finding it, he blinked at the fluorescent bulbs overhead flickered to life. There were rows of filing cabinets here, a whole damn field of them, it seemed, and he opened the first one he found. Financial statements. Useless.

Quickly, he moved through the metal cabinets, dismissing their contents. Monetary contributions, property values, tax assessments. He needed a better system of looking or he would be here forever, and he knew he was already out of time.

He moved towards the back of the room, theorizing that the records from the early days would have been stored first. Under the harsh glare of the lights, he could see the coating of dust on all of the cabinets back here.

Except one.

He yanked the top drawer open, grabbed the first folder he touched. _Ellison Farm Property Assessment_, the first page read.

"Bingo," he whispered.

Hurriedly, he flipped through the rest of the sheets, looking for names. There were none, so he moved to the next folder. Still nothing.

Growing more and more frustrated, he tore the cabinet apart.

In the very last drawer, at the very back, there was a slim hanging folder with just one piece of paper in it.

Fingers trembling slightly, he opened the cover.

There was a red smiling face drawn on the white paper.

_I win_, it said.

A second later, he heard the soft shuffle of feet, but didn't even have time to turn around before the blow caught him on the back of the head and everything went dark.


	14. Chapter 14

**AN:** Bit of a short chapter here, but a lot happens!

Thanks so much for everyone who has reviewed this. Someday, I will get back to responding…but I figured you'd rather have another chapter than wait for me to message you back?

Without further ado… put your crash helmets on. ;)

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Fourteen**

She woke up in a dark room, hands bound behind her back. There was a funny taste in her mouth, and her head was throbbing. Instinctively pulling at her bonds, she felt around the black space with her feet, discovering by touch that the room she was in was small. A closet, maybe? Her mind was taking a long time to shake off the lingering fuzziness.

Dimly, she recalled what had happened. She had been following Jane down a hallway, silently praying that this scheme was going to work. When she reached the fork in their path, she had gone one way and he had gone the other.

She tried to focus more. No one had been in the hall. The thing had seemed to go on forever, full of identical doors on either side. If she looked too long, it gave her vertigo. She had grit her teeth and pushed forward, keeping a sharp eye out for the room number Jane had provided her with. Sometimes his memory still amazed her.

Her footsteps had sounded outrageously loud in the empty space, like she was wearing tap shoes. Still, she had kept on. It had seemed like forever, but in reality was probably only a couple of minutes. The room she was looking for came into view, and, taking a deep breath, she'd opened the door. It was unlocked, which made her uneasy, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Three more steps and she realized she wasn't alone. Before she could spin around, face whoever it was, a glancing blow caught her across the back of the head. On her knees, she'd struggled to remain conscious, realizing that she was probably in serious trouble. A heavy, strong body knelt behind her, one meaty arm securing her flailing limbs, the other trying to press a sweet-smelling handkerchief to her nose.

Summoning what was left of her strength, she twisted, biting, until her mouth was free. All she had time for was one short scream before the grip on her became brutal and she was forced to breathe in against the chemical soaked linen. It had only taken a few seconds and the edges of her vision had started to blur into black.

She had a moment or two to think about Jane, and to pray that he somehow found a way out of all of this before the whole world shifted and went dark.

And here she was. Somewhere.

There were no indicators of where this particular closet might be located. She could still be in the heart of Visualize, or she might be in Antarctica.

Willing herself to stay calm, she directed all of her attention towards what held her wrists together. Zip-ties, by the feel of them. They were tight, the plastic already cutting into her skin, but she was a trained officer of the law and had been for years. The reason real kidnappers and criminals didn't use zip-ties was because they were possible to get out of, if you knew what you were doing. Fortunately, she did.

A few minutes later, she was chafing her hands down her arms, ignoring the residual pain her escape had caused, hoping to regain proper feeling in her fingers soon. The tips of them were totally numb, telling her she had been tied up for a few hours.

Alternately shaking each of her hands, she felt her way around the small room again. The walls were smooth and cool. They had a slightly bumpy finish, like normal wallboard and plaster, but they were surprisingly cool to the touch, as though they were backed with cement. It was an unsettling thought, but not as much as the fact that she was unable to find a door anywhere.

Hell, there wasn't even a crack or a seam or a dent in the walls. She fought the urge to scream and forced her police skills to take over.

Kneeling quickly, she scrabbled around the floor. It was totally even, too, no evidence of trapdoor or other opening.

The ceiling, then.

She stretched on to the tips of her toes, reaching upwards, but her fingers touched nothing but air. Whetting her dry lips, she let out a whistle and listened, estimating by the echo and the way the noise sounded that the room ended maybe ten feet above her head. That had to be where the exit was; there literally was no other option. She had to have gotten in here _somehow_.

Frustrated, she hammered her fist against the wall but stopped quickly. There was no telling when she was going to get out of here – it was stupid to waste her energy and strength on pointless acts of rage. Even if she really, really wanted to.

Keeping her breathing even, she slid down the wall to the cold floor, wrapping her arms around herself.

It was time to look rationally at the situation.

She was locked in a dark room in God-only-knew where, having been abducted by party or parties unknown. That was the extent of the actual facts she had in her possession. The rest was just going to be speculation.

Did Visualize have her? Or was it Red John? Were they one in the same?

And where did Robert Kirkland come into all of this? Just before Jason Cooper had been summoned from their meeting room, she had sworn she'd seen the man in all of his Department of Homeland Security glory, ordering the lesser mortals around.

Jane had seemed…unsurprised to see him, which told her that he had something planned. So Jane trusted Kirkland? It baffled her, but the more she thought about it, the more she figured it was probably at least a little true. Trusted him enough to use him, which was very characteristic of Patrick Jane.

A small, bitter voice in the back of her mind wondered if he was doing the same thing with her. Rationally, she knew her attitude was coming from her current situation, but it was difficult to shake her dark thoughts.

"Shut up, Lisbon," she hissed into the darkness, purposely using her last name. "Wondering about your relationship with Jane isn't going to get you out of here now. Stop acting like a moron. You can figure everything else out when you're not being held hostage."

Closing her eyes against the blackness that surrounded her, she slowly counted to ten, compartmentalizing everything emotional and personal, the anguish and the pain and the absolute, choking _fear, _just like she had been trained to do. Nothing mattered now except survival.

She would get out of this. She would.

Even if she wasn't sure how.

XxXxXxXxXxXxX

Jane woke up in entirely different circumstances, though, of course, he had no way of knowing that. His hands were free, and he was lying face-down on some dusty carpet which, at one time, was probably very nice.

There were slanted rays of sunlight hitting the wall behind him, and he stared a moment at the honey oak trim that edged the carpet, trying to get his mental balance. Something was itching at the back of his mind, a sense of familiarity.

Cautiously rolling, he sat up, and found himself in an entirely empty room.

Almost instantly, his heart caught, for this was not just any vacant room.

It was Charlotte's.

The walls were light pink, the ceiling fan blades done in shades of pastels. Without looking, he knew there was a stain in one corner of the room that had occurred courtesy of an unattended juice box.

Ignoring the familiar squeezing in his chest, he stood, hands leaving smudges on the pale walls. The door was unlocked, and he stepped out into the hallway.

There was nothing here either. The floor had been mopped, so there wasn't even another set of footprints that he could follow.

Out of habit, he checked the somewhat less empty room at the end of the hall, but there was nothing there except a discolored smiling face and a bare mattress.

Once he reached the main level, he remembered to check his pockets. Predictably, his phone was gone. The light streaming in through the grimy windows told him it was midday. He just wasn't sure of _which_ day. Clearly not the same one he had been taken on, unless whoever brought him here had access to a rocket. A plane, maybe, but he thought it looked close to noon, and they hadn't even arrived at Visualize until after one.

He looked around the open space, wondering what he was supposed to find here. There had to be some purpose in this, bringing him back to where it had all started.

In the back of his mind, there was a growing fear for Lisbon's safety, and the rest of the team. Something had gone very wrong at Visualize, and he could only hope that he was the only one truly affected by it.

To his immense surprise, his car was parked in the circular driveway, keys in the ignition. As he turned them, he wondered belatedly if the thing was going to blow up, but the engine fired to life as it always did.

And then he saw the painted face on the glove compartment.

Fingers trembling, he flipped it open. On top of the owner's manual was an envelope made out of heavy stationary. He pulled the folded note out and began to read.

_Dear mister Jane, _

_We have come a long way since you first read those words. I admit, I've had quite a good time watching you flounder about. However, like all good things, it is now time for this to come to an end. You have a choice to make now: your darling Lisbon, or your ill-advised quest for revenge. I'm afraid that you simply cannot have both. In fact, I've made sure of it. I told you I was changing the rules, and now I've changed them once more. _

_You have until midnight on the twenty first. At that time, if you haven't managed to find her, Teresa Lisbon dies, end of story. Of course, you can also use that time to make one last, sorry attempt to find me. The choice is yours. I would like to assure you now that even if you catch me, it doesn't guarantee you your partner lives. Far from it, actually. Perhaps you're wondering what happens if you manage to do neither? It's simple – once Teresa Lisbon's body is discovered, quite dead, you'll have a breakdown of biblical proportions and kill yourself. Or, if you wait just a bit, I'll come do it for you. Additionally, save Lisbon, and I still intend to come after you. _

_In the spirit of the game we've played for the past decade, I've decided to give you a sporting chance at accomplishing one of your two goals – naturally, I'm not telling you which one. You will find your first clue in the trunk. It is up to you what you do with it. _

_Tick tock. _

The note ended there. He all but hurled it down, practically throwing himself out of the car in his haste to open the trunk.

There was a small box there. In it, he found a burner cell phone which told him it was the nineteenth, a day later than he remembered. He had just over thirty six hours to save Lisbon. Or to catch Red John.

He fumbled in the box again, and pulled out a small bunch of grapes. He stared at it for a moment, then reached inside once more, hoping for something else, something that he could decipher easier, but his fingers just touched the smooth sides of the cardboard.

"Shit," he muttered, peering at the slightly withered fruit in his hand. It could mean anything. It could mean that Lisbon was in wine country or that Red John liked to shop at the farmer's market or something so bizarrely obscure that he would never make the connection.

Abruptly, he felt the first waves of panic hit him.

Lisbon's life was on the line. It was utterly up to him to save her. And if he did, Red John would find him. Or perhaps he would be waiting. It didn't seem to matter.

He had been working towards his revenge for ten years.

But now he had to choose - love or revenge? Darkness or light? Loyalty to his past or hope for his future? And with every moment that ticked by, someone got closer to making that decision for him, only they weren't faced with his options. All they had to work with was life or death.

Who said he couldn't have both, though? Couldn't have Lisbon and catch the son of a bitch who murdered his family?

Angry now, he slammed the trunk down and got back into the driver's seat. Before he was even out of the driveway, he was dialing the CBI's number.

Cho answered.

"What the hell is going on in Sacramento?" Jane asked without preamble.

"Jane?" the other man said, and the laser focus in his voice was evident. "Where have you been? Are you with Lisbon? We've been tearing this city apart looking for you guys."

He pulled out onto the highway, turning north. "I just woke up in Malibu," he related. "I don't know how I got there. I'm not with Lisbon either, but listen, she's in serious trouble." Quickly, briefly, he summarized what was happening.

When he finished speaking, there were several moments of silence as Cho processed the latest turn of events. "Okay," he finally said. "What are you going to do?"

"Come back to the office," Jane said. He was going to waste time doing that, but he needed to start somewhere, and he didn't trust this phone. For all he knew, Red John had bugged it. In fact, he would be very surprised indeed if it was a clean line. He needed to see the team in person, needed to make plans where they couldn't be overheard.

It was a smart move on Red John's part – bringing him to Malibu had a double effect. For one, being here always played hell with his emotions, made it harder to think properly. For another, it put him almost seven hours away from the rest of the team, and Red John had probably correctly assumed that he wouldn't disclose any of his plans over an unsecured cell.

As he merged onto the freeway, he put his foot down on the accelerator until it hit the floor. "What happened with the whole Visualize thing?" he asked, remembering to use his blinker before changing lanes.

"It was a debacle," Cho said succinctly. "Before we got very far, the fire alarms went off. Looks like someone started one hell of a blaze on the inside. No one was hurt, but most of the structure got charred."

Swearing again, he passed a slow-moving Ford. "Focus on trying to find Lisbon," he said, "I'll be there as soon as I can." He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

By the time he reached Sacramento, he would have less than twenty nine hours to rescue Lisbon and catch Red John. In that order.

His hands tightened around the steering wheel.

There was no other way this was going to work, and he refused to contemplate alternatives. However, he couldn't deny what Red John had written. If he lost Lisbon, that would be the end for him. He had used up all of his coping mechanisms when his family had been killed. He simply couldn't deal with anything else. There would be no putting him back together this time around.

Red John still might plan on killing him, but the man would have to hurry. It was damned difficult to kill someone who was already dead.


	15. Chapter 15

**AN:** Wow, I've been so bad at updating in a timely fashion! I know I apologize every chapter for sucking, but I feel compelled to do so again. I know updating every other day or so is sort of my thing, but I've found it really difficult to do so this summer. Imagine that – it's apparently much easier for me to write when I'm forced to be in my classroom for eight hours a day.

Anyway, if you've stuck with me for this long, you have my undying gratitude. I mean that sincerely! This is going to be wrapping up in the next few chapters, and I hope I manage to not disappoint all of you!

And this wouldn't be a Starry Story if I failed to warn you to put your crash helmets on and buckle up! Let me know what you think, too! I thrive on reviews!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Fifteen**

The darkness was beginning to wear on her. She was never one to be scared of the dark – in her line of work, it was definitely not a luxury she could afford. However, the seemingly endless hours she was spending in this black hole were starting to play with her mind.

Her ears were strained so hard for the slightest sound that she was quite convinced she was hearing things. Footsteps, the low murmur of voices, a far-off thud…she'd heard it all. And, unwise and unhelpful though it may have been, she couldn't help but shriek every time, fists banging on the sides of her make-shift prison until they were numb.

Naturally, it was all to no avail. When the pounding subsided, she was left with nothing but the sound of her blood rushing through her ears and the throbbing ache in her hands.

She would sink back to the floor, trying to get control of her breathing, arms wrapped around herself.

As far as psychological warfare went, whoever had her was doing a good job. Though she rationally realized it was either Red John or one of his very close associates, she tried not to think about it too closely, understanding that the idea that she was locked in the dark by a serial killer was going to be too much for her frayed mind.

Instead, she prayed, fingers wrapped around her cross. But did she pray to be rescued? Or did she pray for Red John to be caught? In the end, she prayed for Jane to stay safe. Of course, she figured she'd have better luck asking God to literally send down an angel. Patrick Jane was going to do what he thought best, regardless of the danger, especially where she was concerned.

She wondered if she was ever going to get the chance to tell him how very much she loved him, had loved him for years. If not, she simply had to hope that he knew. At least she'd had the experience of being with him, of knowing what his skin tasted like and how he slept with his face pressed close to her neck when he was exhausted.

And that was something. More than she thought she'd ever have, to be honest.

With another deep, shuddering breath, she pulled herself together enough to start a different prayer. She pressed her forehead to her knees, the blackness behind her eyelids much more soothing than the one that surrounded her when her eyes were open.

She would stay that way until her ears picked up on another slight sound, real or imagined, and then the screaming would start again.

XxXxXxXxXxXxX

He had never made the drive to Sacramento so quickly. Once or twice, he wondered if the Citroen was going to hold up under the strain, but the old girl kept it together.

Cho was waiting in the parking lot, Rigsby and Van Pelt arranged behind him. Jane couldn't remember a time when he had been happier to see them. He took a moment to remember to be grateful that he still had people like this in his life.

To his surprise, Grace hugged him. After a second, he carefully returned her embrace.

"I'm so glad you're okay," she whispered. "We wouldn't know what to do without you."

Despite everything, he smiled. "You'd have a good deal less paperwork, that much is certain."

"So," Cho said, stoic as always. "What's the plan?"

Quickly, Jane filled the others in on what the note from Red John said, the rules that had been laid out.

Rigsby looked ashen. "What are we going to do?"

He took a deep breath. "We're going to try to have our cake and eat it, too. We're getting Lisbon back. That's priority number one. At the same time, we're going to do everything we can to get Red John, too."

"Alright," Cho murmured after a brief pause, "how are we going to do that?"

"Damned if I know," Jane admitted, "but at this point, I refuse to consider the possibility that we can't do both."

There were a few moments of silence. "You said Red John was going to leave you clues," Rigsby said thoughtfully. "What was the first one?"

Frowning now, Jane reached into his pocket and pulled out the sad looking bunch of grapes. "This is it." Grace took it from him, peering closely. "As far as clues go, it's pretty damn vague. On the way here, I thought of about forty seven different possibilities, each as likely as the one before it."

"And there's no way to tell if this clue is meant to lead you to Lisbon or to Red John," Grace added. It wasn't a question, more like a resigned statement.

"I've been mulling that over, too," Jane said. "And I think this is probably a clue leading to Red John. Just hear me out – I have no idea where Lisbon is, absolutely none. I'm going to follow any clue I can get my hands on. Following clues is going to take the vast majority of my brain power, leaving me with little time for anything else. I think it would be very Red John-ish to make me follow a trail that leads to him, and not what I really want."

"That's a hell of a theory," Rigsby said. "So, what? We just disregard the grapes?"

"Far from it," Jane replied. "Like I said, I have no idea where Lisbon is. The grapes are the only thing I have to go on. Yes, they most likely will take me to Red John, but that's how we find Lisbon."

As far as plans went, it was a bad one, with a million possible outcomes that led to his death or worse, Lisbon's. However, it was the only one he could come up with under such dire circumstances. Once he had Red John, Jane was confident he could make the other man talk. There were literally no lengths he wasn't willing to go to, nothing that would be off limits, morally, ethically, physically, or any other way he could conceive of. He would give up Lisbon's location, and once she was safe again, Red John would meet his end.

Over the past few years, he had begun to accept the idea that when Red John's identity was revealed, Lisbon would be there, and she would force him into doing the right thing. As much as he wanted revenge, he had almost come to terms with the thought that the infamous serial killer was going to go through the California legal system.

All of that had suddenly flown out the proverbial window. Red John had changed the rules – Jane certainly could, too.

Now that his decision had been made, there was another problem. He literally didn't know where to start. He supposed at the beginning would be the logical place, which meant scratching the most obvious things off of the list. There were a few things that needed to be taken care of first, though.

"We're going rogue for this one," he said, and everyone's attention sharpened a bit more. "There is no one in the CBI outside of the three of you that I trust. Not a soul. Keeping that in mind, I don't want anyone else in on the search. I'd be far too worried that one of them would do something to point us in the wrong direction."

But that led him to another issue – how the hell were they going to pull something this big off without any help, without any resources?

Cho frowned. "Fine. What's our first move?"

Even though Jane hated to look in the obvious places, he utterly refused to leave any stone unturned. "Napa," he said. "We check into Napa. Grapes, wine, wine country."

"I'll go," Rigsby volunteered immediately. "I'm assuming we're all going to need to split up. Cover as much ground as we can as quickly as possible."

"Absolutely," Jane agreed. "But first, we need to all find new phones. I have no idea where my cell is, and there's no quick way to tell if your phones have been bugged, too."

An hour later, each outfitted with a burner phone, the team split off into three different directions, Jane's instructions ringing in their ears.

"Call every hour," he stressed. "I don't care if you know anything new or not. And be as careful as you've ever been. Lisbon and I were abducted pretty damn easily; you certainly can be as well."

As for himself, Jane was holed up in a place that leant itself to contemplation. He wasn't in his attic, wasn't in his hotel room. Both of those places could have been compromised, and he wanted to avoid the CBI.

While there were a few people that had seen him in the parking lot, he wasn't particularly worried. Eventually, word was going to get out that he wasn't missing any longer, but the smaller the number of state agents who knew about his return, the better. So he had avoided the places missing persons would be searching.

Instead, he was resting his weight on the granite headstone of someone named Francis Crawford, hoping whoever it was wouldn't begrudge him the space. Angela and Charlotte's headstones looked back at him, as cold and as unmoving as they ever were.

He felt relatively unwatched here; this was a place he didn't come often, and everyone knew it. In fact, he could count on one hand the number of times he had been here since their passing. But now it felt like the only place left that was untouched.

Staring at the engraved names on the matching stones, he willed his mind to come up with something that would help them. The team was doing their best, but there had to be something he was missing, some sort of short cut that would bring him to Lisbon.

There was no doubt now that Visualize was hiding Red John, sheltering the serial killer's records behind the guise of religion. Stiles was definitely in on it, and most of the higher-ups probably were as well. They had a great deal of money and influence behind them, with the added bonus of no one knowing who all of the damn members were.

Maybe he should go back to Visualize headquarters, see if there was anything left to be found. Find some answers in the ashes there.

Almost immediately, he dismissed the thought. It would be stupid, would be almost suicidal. They would be looking for him, and the place was probably crawling with police officers, both honest ones and ones on the Visualize rosters.

Someone would find him, and he would be no good to Lisbon, no good to anyone.

Did he just start going up to the remaining suspects on the list and waving a gun in their faces? God knew he was quite capable of doing so. But too much time would be wasted as he did that – he would have to determine if each person was lying, and lying about what. It simply wouldn't work.

His time limit, damnably short already, was wasting away as he sat there thinking. Thinking, and not acting. Being totally useless and unable to help the woman he loved, all because his brain had been worked into knots. Too many hours, too many years, of being subtle and secret had left their mark on the way his thought process worked.

It was time for him to pull out all the stops, time to stop worrying about secrecy so much. Everything was going to come out now, one way or another.

Mentally, he traced Angela's name. Often, he wondered if he should have put something else on their tombstones, something that told the world who they were. Then he figured it wasn't for the world to know, anyway. And words didn't exist that could convey how much the two of them were loved, how they were the center of his universe, the core of his very being. So he had settled for names and nothing else.

At the moment, he found himself wishing that he had gotten something thoughtful inscribed, some trite words of wisdom that would help him through his current trial.

He would die if he lost Lisbon; his life would absolutely be over. There were only so many times a man could love deeply and have that ripped away from him before it was all too much. This was precisely why he had avoided getting close to anyone for the past ten years. Red John had managed to take away anyone he had remotely cared about.

Kristina Frye had been institutionalized, then hypnotized into killing herself. Madeline Hightower had been forced into hiding, though he had never had any romantic feelings for his boss. Of course, this was after Red John attempted to pin Todd Johnson's murder on her.

A thought triggered in the back of his mind when he re-thought the details of Johnson's case. It was fleeting, not totally concrete, and yet, he got the sense that it was of monumental importance.

But what was it?

He forced his brain back down the path it had taken. Todd Johnson. The murders of four people, presumably under Red John's orders. That ridiculous fake psychic. The first time had seen Lisbon in her oversized jersey.

When the pieces clicked together, his lips parted slightly in surprise. It couldn't really be that easy, could it? Red John wouldn't have made it that obvious.

And yet, as when he made other correct conclusions, it feel utterly right, something deep within him falling into place.

But he needed to be sure, needed to be totally and desperately sure.

With one last look at his wife's tombstone, he stood and ran the distance back to his car. In another fifteen minutes, he was at the public library, tapping carefully on a computer.

And then…there it was. He was right, he had to be. There would be no other reason for the grapes, for something that obscure when first beheld, but then so obvious.

Well, obvious to him, but Red John definitely knew how his mind worked. He was forced to admit that his thought patterns were alarmingly similar to the serial killer's, but that couldn't be helped, and now was definitely not the time to be worrying over it.

He checked the time on his phone. Too many of his precious hours had already passed. If he was wrong, he was going to lose both of them, Lisbon and Red John.

If he was a praying sort, he would have paused to ask God to guide him in the right direction.

Instead, he ran to the Citroen, pushing numbers on the unfamiliar phone as he went.

Cho answered on the first ring. "Jane."

"I think I know where Red John is," he said without preamble.

XxXxXxXxXxX

In her mind, she was trying to relive some of her favorite memories. Most of them involved Jane, but she dutifully recalled hot Chicago days spent chasing her brothers around the local public pool, wondering how none of the idiots had drowned or Thanksgivings and Christmases before her mother had died.

She had always assumed that she would be able to create some new family memories, with a husband and children of her own, be able to pass on traditions she had loved.

There were even a few seconds in the past weeks where she had honestly let herself dream that it could be possible with Jane, to imagine the expression on his face when their child would come into the world.

It didn't look like any of that would be happening, however.

Wherever she was, she didn't have a hope of getting out of it by herself. And unless Jane could find her, and find her soon, she was either going to die or go insane.

She wondered if that was the plan, to have her go so completely crackpot that Jane wouldn't even recognize her when and if she was rescued.

That seemed a little dramatic, however, with too many ways it could go wrong. The actual plan was probably much more straightforward, something that ended with her being definitely dead.

Abruptly, there was a noise, like metal grinding on metal. She looked up, confident this time that this wasn't all in her head.

There was still total darkness above her, and her eyes were too strained to see any variation in the gloom.

When the grinding stopped, there were a few moments of silence, then a different sound came to her ears. It was softer, much less harsh.

She carefully felt her way around the small chamber, fingers scrabbling over the smooth surfaces.

She touched something grainy, something familiar.

It was dirt.

Frowning, she touched it again. There was a small pile on the floor, but the rushing in her ears told her that it was still coming down.

She raised her hands, trying to find the flow. It didn't take long. There wasn't a significant amount, but the stream seemed steady, constant.

And it didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on.

Slowly and surely, she was going to be buried alive.


	16. Chapter 16

**AN:** A week, huh? I'm not very good at this lately! I do appreciate you all so very much, though!

When this is over, I think perhaps I'll write a few tags to older episodes. Currently, I'm in the middle of re-watching the entire series, so my head is full of lots of wonderful moments. It's amazing what you catch in an episode that you might have missed the first (several) times you saw it.

I'm thinking two or three more chapters for this one before the end. Quite a bit has to happen, I know, so that means that you should probably keep your helmets on!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Sixteen**

Vineland, California.

It was stupidly obvious.

Grapes grow on vines. The very first time he had been to Vineland, he had been in the middle of a vineyard. It was where he had first met Todd Johnson, where he had first seen the serious evidence of what Red John had managed to do with his recruitment process.

Later, when the connection to that small town had surfaced again, when Madeline Hightower was being framed, he should have looked closer, but he didn't.

He wondered if Red John expected him to figure out this clue so quickly. Well, quickly was a relative term. If the time line was correct, he was down to single digits as far as hours were concerned.

In the seat beside him, Cho was stoically silent, as per his usual, and Jane found it comforting, soothing, a way to calm his own stormy thoughts. The other man had taken Jane at his word, understanding the conclusions as soon as they were spoken aloud.

The road was flying away under the Citroen's tires. In theory, the plan was simple: go to Vineland, find whatever suspect was on the list, and flay them within an inch of their lives. Closer, if they gave Lisbon's location up quickly. That would be the only thing that would possibly cause him to show an ounce of mercy.

Behind the Citroen, Van Pelt and Rigsby followed closely in the CBI Suburban. It had taken precious time to gather them all together after he had figured out the clue, but he wasn't stupid enough to go chasing after Red John by himself. Not this time – there was far too much at stake, and he wasn't willing to risk Lisbon's life.

"How are we going to find your suspects?" Cho asked into the silence. "It's not like wandering around, knocking on doors is going to be an option."

Jane pondered the idea for a bit. "I think we're going to have to break our radio silence. It's probably time to start using some CBI resources. Not until we get to Vineland, though. I want to wait as long as possible, keep our cover up. As soon as we start tapping away in criminal data bases, we give away our position."

"Fine," the other man agreed. "Then what?"

"I'm assuming there's another clue to find," Jane said. "Something equally obscure as those damn grapes, but maybe we'll get lucky. Hopefully, we're moving faster than Red John anticipated."

"How involved do you think Visualize is?" Cho wanted to know.

"Very," he answered. "They've definitely been running protection for Red John for any number of years. It explains how Brett Stiles knew where Kristina Frye was, among other things."

"Do you think Stiles himself in Red John?"

Jane shook his head. "No. Though he could perhaps be a mentor of some sort. He's definitely complicit, definitely an ally. The man knows everything that goes on in his organization. There's no way he missed a serial killer hiding in the wings."

There were several more moments of quiet contemplation. Then, "What do we do if Stiles is the first one we find?"

"We make him talk." The words were said flatly, but even Jane himself could hear the gravity in them, and knew Cho could, too. He meant that there was literally no line he wouldn't cross to get what he needed.

The fact that Cho merely nodded showed that he, too, was willing to go to any lengths imaginable to get Lisbon back.

They stopped at a run-down looking rest area just on the outskirts of town. Evening was starting to fall, the shadows growing on one side of the dilapidated buildings that surrounded them. Jane could feel the press of time wearing on him, every tick of the clock matching up with a beat of his heart. He wondered how long it would be before the ticking of seconds was the only thing he could hear.

Twisting his wedding ring in agitation, he waited as Grace set up some computer equipment, trying to console himself with the fact that she was very good at what she did, and that she was surely working as fast as she could.

"Okay," she said, "after what seemed like a small eternity. This is sort of a crapshoot, but I can tell you that Reed Smith is working a case with Mancini in Los Angeles right now, so that's one down."

Jane nodded. Smith had made the list by default; Jane himself had been surprised when he'd discovered that. He certainly didn't match any of Rosalind Harker's descriptions, but he fit the rest of the criteria, so on he went.

"According to personnel records," Grace went on, "Bertram is in Sacramento, having a meeting with some statehouse brass at this second."

In a few minutes, she looked up. "That's all I can narrow it down to, Jane. Not everyone has a record that I can access. Haffner doesn't work for the state of California anymore, Stiles is a private citizen, and McAllister's police department doesn't have records online, at least not for current cases."

"Understood, Grace," he said, hoping he didn't sound ungrateful. He really and truly wasn't. "Well, you all know what we have to work with. Let's get started."

After he had initially created his list of seven, he had done a bit more research into each individual person, noting things like family members and the sort of cars they drove. He was now banking on that information to take them a step further.

Grace and Rigsby were entering license plate numbers into the system, hoping to find a match somewhere, and Cho was keeping an ear on the local police scanner, on the off chance they got very, very lucky.

Not that he believed in luck.

As for himself, he was sitting in the front seat of the Citroen, hands pressed against his eyes, willing his mind again to come up with the answers.

There was the sound of static over the scanner, and from the corner of his vision, he saw Cho's posture sharpen. Jane had listened to enough police chatter over the years to recognize some of the codes.

Vineland PD had just gotten a call in about a homicide, discovered in a seedy hotel, if the address was any indication. What really caught his attention, however, was the brief description of the act. Knife work. Gruesome. The dispatcher already wanted to know if he needed to get the CBI on the line, since they were usually the ones that dealt with this sort of thing.

"Let's go," he told the team.

The only thing that kept his sanity intact was that the victim had clearly been described as a white male. Otherwise he was sure he would have been dredging up bloody images of Lisbon, murdered and broken in some dirty hotel.

The crime scene tape was still being put up when they arrived. Before the CBI agents had even finished flashing their badges, Jane was inside the room.

He had not been prepared to find Robert Kirkland sprawled across the floral comforter.

True, he really had no love for the man, but it was still a shock, seeing someone he knew, someone who he'd had conversations with, someone that he had begun to regard as an ally, lying there with unseeing eyes pointed at the ceiling, face set in an eternal grimace.

Red John's leering smile presided over the scene, bigger than it normally was, more ominous.

"Jesus Christ." Behind him, Rigsby had entered the room. "I didn't like the guy, but for God's sake…"

"He was telling the truth, then," Jane muttered, almost to himself. "Otherwise there was no reason to kill him." Although he had suspected Kirkland was being honest, here was confirmation. A little late, though.

There was the sound of another set of footsteps. Grace. "Do we look for clues?" she asked. "I'm assuming we were meant to find him."

"But not until later, I think," Jane said. "Red John probably didn't expect us to already be here. It will take another hour, maybe two, for the locals to call it into CBI, and maybe another hour for the word to get to the SCU. He was leading us here just in time to be too late."

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew the truth in them. How very Red John. They were going to find the clue that would lead them to Lisbon, but the original plan's timeline would get them in this hotel room far too late.

They had a narrow lead, and they needed to do everything they could to take advantage of it.

"Search everything," he said shortly. "Don't worry about messing up forensics and all of that other crap right now. We need to hurry."

The glowing numbers on the alarm clock seemed to taunt him, and he abruptly turned the device so it was facing the wall.

It was Cho that found what they had surely been sent here to find. Written in blood on the inside of the shower stall was a set of coordinates. Jane doubted it would be that easy, but it was something solid, something not nearly as obscure as produce.

Of course, the whole goddamn thing was probably a trap. He didn't have the luxury of worrying about that right now, though.

Grace was already typing the location into her phone. Impatiently, he peered over her shoulder, watching the icon that told him the GPS was searching for the destination. The screen blinked for a second, then a set of directions popped up.

"Shit," was all he whispered.

And then he ran.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The stream of dirt that was flowing into her prison had kept up a steady stream. In her moments of feigned optimism, Lisbon thought that at least it wasn't getting stronger. After a fashion, she had started pushing the stuff into the corners of the small room and packing it down tightly. Might as well make as much room as she possibly could.

In her darker moments, which, admittedly, were more frequent, she wondered what the hell she was doing. It was all useless and futile anyway.

Someone wanted her to die here, and so she probably would.

Being buried alive had to top her list of ways she would never, ever want to die, right up there with being burned to death or slowly eaten by a giant snake. The amount of waiting time, the knowledge that this was how she was going to go…it consumed her.

Her lungs would start to burn, the pressure of wanting fresh, clean air would be her last thought, and then, unavoidably, she would open her mouth and swallow the earth around her. It wouldn't be instant, though. No, her body would still fight for a while. She was relatively young, healthier than most, and she had a damnable stubborn streak in her. So there would be a few minutes of agonizing pain where her body tried to hold on.

But then it would eventually be over.

Someone would find her, maybe, covered in silt, the dark grains shoved into her ears and eyes.

A wave of panic lapped at her consciousness, but she fought it back with immense effort.

Unless Red John had managed to take out the entire CBI, there were people looking for her, and as long as they were, she _should not_ give up hope. And if Jane was still alive out there…well, he was cleverer than most, and maybe she had a shot.

It was hard to keep up that attitude, though, with darkness and earth surrounding her in such a manner.

However, in the very back of her mind, she had started to formulate a plan. It was probably utter madness, brought on by terror and desperation, but it was something to hold onto.

If the dirt was getting in, it meant that there was an opening somewhere. Some way out. The grains weren't particularly fine or sandy…they just felt like regular earth.

So she started packing the continually falling chunks in some semblance of order, the calm of action taking over the uncertainty of simply waiting.

In her silent determination, she had even forgotten to stop praying continually.

She only hoped she would live long enough to feel guilty about it.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The lights were off at Rosalind Harker's house, but since she was blind, that was not unusual. Of course, it was also a perfect setting for something like this.

What _this_ was, however, he wasn't sure. Kidnapping? Torture?

The computer voice on the dashboard GPS informed them that their destination was on the left. Yes, he saw that, thank you very much. But when the directions had faded away, all that remained was absolute silence as the team waited for him to make the first move.

They had parked far enough away that he suspected Rosalind wouldn't have heard the vehicles. Granted, he was sure she had excellent hearing, but it was rather late and she was more than likely asleep.

Quickly, he exited the car, Cho mimicking his movements.

To their right, Rigsby and Van Pelt were getting out of the Suburban, already reaching for bulletproof vests and larger firearms. Cho had suited up before they'd left Vineland.

In the encompassing darkness, their footsteps sounded unbelievably loud. He thought shooting off a cannon might be a little less inconspicuous, but that was his paranoia talking. This late at night, normally no one would hear them.

But there was nothing normal about this particular night, and there was no telling who or what was waiting for them. As far back as they'd parked, only an idiot would have failed to see the headlights turn into the drive and then vanish, and Jane sincerely believed that they were _not_ dealing with a person of below average intelligence.

As they crept towards the house, he settled for walking between Rigsby and Van Pelt, who was bringing up the rear. He wanted to rush inside immediately, to find Lisbon, but he knew that was a stupid plan. Armed agents were good people to have go ahead of you into an unknown situation, though he had requested a bullet proof vest, figuring he should cover all of his bases. He wore it awkwardly, distastefully, but better safe than dead.

Fifty feet or so from the front door, the team split, and he went with Grace towards the back entrance. They were now radio silent except for emergent situations. He had a feeling one of those was going to be fast approaching. There was an air of trepidation around them, and something in his gut told him they were being watched.

Perhaps he would look up to find Rosalind in the window, though it wasn't like she could actually see them. And, perhaps, it was someone else entirely. He felt goosebumps crawl down his arms, but he had no time to deal with them. There were more important things to be done.

The back of Rosalind's house looked much like every old farmhouse in America. There was a low porch without rails, the weathered boards faded to a dim gray. They had been painted white once, but that had been decades ago. A set of lopsided steps led to the slightly lilting deck, where an old-fashioned screen door rested. He assumed the door led to the kitchen, but he couldn't be sure.

A closer look told him that there was another door off to the side, lower than the porch, leading to a basement, most likely.

Everything in the back was slightly overgrown. In the moonlight, he could see that there had once been great quantities of flower beds, now ignored by the woman who had no use for their potential beauty.

The trees that surrounded the property seemed to lean in around the house, protecting it from the outside world. They were some miles from town, and he couldn't recall seeing any neighbors on the way here. A perfect place to hide someone.

He wondered how Rosalind had been convinced to go along with this scheme, for she had surely realized that he was telling the truth about Roy. But like he had told Agent Darcy once, she was a lonely soul, and Red John had probably the first man who had paid her any sort of romantic attention in God knew how long. He assumed she fancied herself in love with him, and was willing to go to all sorts of lengths for the good man she tried to assure everyone else he was.

Grace tapped him silently on the shoulder, the tilt of her head telling him that they were going in. Cho and Rigsby hadn't told them of anything suspicious on the other side of the house, so they were ready to move forward.

He nodded his understanding, then took a deep breath, staying low to the ground behind the redheaded agent. He hoped someone was praying that Lisbon was alive inside. He certainly couldn't bring himself to do it, to perhaps acknowledge God now.

Grace looked back at him once more, judging his readiness, then raised her weapon and headed for the porch.

Before her foot even touched the dilapidated steps, shots began to ring out.

**XxXxXxX**

Several feet below them, the flow of dirt increased dramatically.


	17. Chapter 17

**AN:** Look, a quick(ish) update! Aren't you all proud of me?

I'm going to go ahead and dedicate this chapter to KatM, my (unsigned!) reviewer who was the only one to pick up on the Francis Crawford reference. If you had an account, I probably would have just sent you a message that said "squeeeeeeee!" For the rest of you – go read The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. I _can_ sort of see Patrick Jane as an older Francis Crawford, though I like to picture Lymond as more of a Carey Elwes in The Princess Bride type.

Okay…I'll shut up and let you read!

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Seventeen**

Her idea was utterly useless. It just took her a long time to admit it to herself. There was literally no way she was going to get out of this hellhole, no way in the world.

Realistically, she had known from the beginning that this would never work, but it wasn't as though she was willing to merely lay down and die. She had things worth fighting for, after all.

But when the flow of dirt unexpectedly increased exponentially, she was forced to admit that she was all but dead. It was only a matter of time.

Still, she wasn't going to fling herself in a corner and cry. Systematically, she continued to push dirt into the corners, buying herself a few minutes of precious time, if very little else. In the back of her mind, she wondered why she was even bothering.

The answer was because she needed to feel like she had done everything she could to save herself. Not _for_ herself, but for Jane. She had no idea if anyone would be able to tell that she had tried, but she thought it might matter to him to know she hadn't given up, that she had made every attempt to make it back to him.

However, as much as she forced herself to fight, the pressing weight of the earth was now halfway up her calves. Still, she toiled on, though it was like walking through sand.

From somewhere outside, dimly through the sound of falling grit, she thought she heard the sound of gunshots. More than likely, it was her brain creating desperate scenarios, but she couldn't help the surge of hope that shot through her system.

If someone was shooting, that meant someone else was there.

At the moment, she didn't even care who it was.

The dirt was now up to her knees. Was it her imagination, or was it falling even faster now?

Panic again.

It was getting so hard to walk, her exhausted muscles screaming in protest, the hours of terror and exertion wearing down her endurance.

Her face was wet, tears and sweat running down her skin in muddy rivulets.

She heard the faint popping noise that might have been gunfire again, and she gave into her most primal urges and screamed.

And the dirt kept coming.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Instinctively, he threw himself to the ground, the hail of bullets flying over his head. Ahead of him, Grace had done the same. Dimly, he heard the static of her radio, Rigsby's voice yelling through the speaker.

He needed to move, needed to go.

Blindly, he crawled forward, knowing that a moving target was much harder to hit than a stationary one. The spray of shots came again, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

The porch was fifty feet in front of him, but going up the stairs seemed like the stupidest idea he'd ever had. Instead, he shifted, making for the lower door off to the side. The gunfire was coming from the woods, from just inside the cover of trees.

He couldn't be sure, but he thought it was just one person firing on them. Not that it made things much better.

An answering report of bullets flying towards the overgrown trees told him that Cho and Rigsby had made it around the side of the house. In the moonlight, he saw Grace using the cover of return fire to seek shelter for herself. He would be wise to do the same.

Instead, he took the opportunity to run in a low crouch towards the side door. Whoever was firing at them didn't want them inside, so that was precisely where he intended to go.

A bullet whizzed by, precariously close to his left ear, and he let out an involuntary cry, dropping fully to the ground again.

He kept going forward, however.

Unsurprisingly, the door was locked. The team, clearly seeing what his intentions were, turned their weapons as one towards their assailant, giving him the thirty or so seconds he needed to pick the lock. He could have done it in less time, but he'd discovered that his hands were shaking bad enough to make it nearly impossible to slip the bent wire into the lock.

Just as he heard the click that told him he had accomplished his goal, he felt a searing pain in his back. His hand twisted the knob as he fell, and he crashed through the door onto the other side. It was almost pitch black here, save the few stray rays of moonlight that peeked through the cracks in the wall.

Cursing, he ripped at the straps on his Kevlar vest, yanking it off and flipping it over. Sure enough, there was a bullet lodged in the lower part of the back panel. Gingerly, he touched the corresponding spot on his own back.

"_Jesus_," he hissed, feeling the welt already rising. The pain was more intense than he ever would have imagined. And he hadn't even really been shot.

Adrenaline pumping crazily through his veins, he tried to bring his focus back.

_Mind over matter_, he reminded himself. He had more important things to worry about. _Let the pain go, just push it away_.

Eyes shut, he used a few precious moments to block out the screaming in his back. Unbidden, he thought of the time he had shot Lisbon when she was wearing a vest, nearly a year ago now. He hadn't realized until now how much actual pain he had caused her.

Leaving the vest where it lay, he started forward, digging the small, CBI-issue flashlight out of his pocket. The small beam didn't do much, but it was certainly better than feeling his way through an unknown house in the dark.

He was definitely in some sort of basement or root cellar. There were dusty shelves lining the walls, and dirt on the floor. Somewhere up ahead, he could hear what sounded like a small motor running. A generator, maybe.

And then, faintly, he heard screaming.

There was no more thought of slowing making his way forward, exercising all caution and care. He ran flat-out, shoes slapping on the hard-packed floor, breath coming in sharp pants.

The basement appeared to be hand-dug, complete with a few narrow hallways that twisted tightly around blind corners. When he emerged into a wider, open space, he caught his breath, looking around in the near-darkness.

There was a small conveyor belt bringing in…dirt? That was the motor he'd been hearing. Coming closer, he saw there appeared to be a timer connected to the speed dial, causing the belt to go faster at certain intervals. The dirt disappeared into a small hole in a new-looking trap door.

The screaming that had propelled his flight had gone ominously quiet, and in a moment, he understood, his heart filling with lead.

Using strength he hadn't known he possessed, he shoved the conveyor belt over, terror taking over his every thought.

The trap door was sealed shut with a padlock, and he had dropped his lock pick when he had fallen through the basement door.

"Lisbon!" he shouted, hands pounding on the sealed entrance. "Hang on!"

There was no response, and he almost choked. Rising, he sprinted back to the entrance, running as fast as he ever had, but still far, far too slow.

The gunfire had ceased by now as well, and as he emerged into the yard, he saw the team standing in a small circle, all apparently unharmed. He didn't have the time to be thankful.

"Come on!" he yelled, panic making his voice crack. "_Now!_"

Whatever they heard in his tone, the team didn't hesitate. After what seemed like a small eternity, they were back in front of the trap door, Jane motioning frantically at the lock.

"Shoot it off," he demanded, and to his credit, Cho asked no questions before raising his weapon. The noise was deafening in the small space, but Jane didn't even wait for the wispy smoke to dissipate before kneeling, brushing the broken lock away.

The door was heavy; Rigsby had to help him pry the thing away from the floor. The scent of fresh earth hit them, and Cho and Grace shined their lights into the exposed space.

It was packed with dirt, very nearly to the top.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," Rigsby whispered, plainly horrified. "Tell me she's not in here."

Jane didn't answer, leaning forward as far as he could and digging his hands into the dusty grains. The entrance wasn't wide, no more than a few feet. Beside him, Grace was pushing dirt aside as well, her movements frantic but determined.

When his fingers touched something hard, he started to scrabble, finally wrapping his hand around what felt like an arm. Cho and Rigsby copied his movements, Grace pushing earth away as best she could, and with a herculean effort, Lisbon's limp form emerged slowly from the pit.

As soon as she was securely on the floor, Jane leaned over her prone body. She wasn't breathing.

Cho's military training took over in that instant. Jane would never remember fully what happened; all he knew was that after a few moments that spanned eons, Lisbon choked out a breath, spitting up dirt, a terrific amount of it, eyes still closed.

Carefully, Cho transferred his hold on her to Jane. "I'm going to call 911," he said.

Her head in Jane's lap, Lisbon continued to breathe, though there was definitely something labored about the sound, and it worried him greatly. But she was alive, her pulse threading beneath his constantly searching fingers. What would he do if it abruptly stopped?

Rigsby and Grace were utterly silent, but for all he was paying attention, they could have been reciting Shakespeare. His entire world was consumed by the sound of Lisbon's exhalations, the thrum of her heartbeat.

She was filthy, dirt everywhere. Her fingernails were caked black, like she had been scrabbling until the end. Absently, he brushed at the grime on her face, but it did no good; his hands were almost as dirty.

_Don't die_, was the only thought in his mind. _Just keep breathing_. _I need you to keep breathing_.

An undefinable amount of time later, he heard the rumble of footsteps and knew the paramedics were here. As one of them listened to her chest, he gave his colleagues a worried look. Jane could hazard a guess at what it meant – something was obstructing her breathing, congesting her chest. It didn't take a genius to figure out what.

By the time she was loaded into the ambulance, Lisbon had made absolutely no sign of being conscious. All she did was continue her labored gasps, but it was better than her _not_.

Grace drove him to the hospital, leaving Cho and Rigsby at the scene.

"What happened outside?" he finally asked, the lights of Sacramento ahead of them in the distance.

"We got the shooter," she said, taking the correct exit, the flashing bulbs of the ambulance a good guide.

"Who was it?" His voice sounded like it was coming from a long way off.

"Ray Haffner," she told him, tone flat. "I'm assuming he was Red John."

Jane considered the news. "I suppose he was," he replied. It almost didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered unless Lisbon lived. "He certainly wasn't working alone," he added. "This whole thing is going to take months to sort out. We have no idea how deep his influence ran."

They were quiet the rest of the way, both lost in their own thoughts.

The next few hours were a blur. Lisbon had already been admitted by the time they arrived. Jane preferred to think it was because she was a state agent and not because her condition was so incredibly dire.

He and Grace set up camp in the ICU waiting room, looking, he supposed, just as anxious as everyone else in the small space. It was a place everyone hated to be, but at least it wasn't the morgue.

Eventually, a scrub-clad doctor came out to tell them that they had decided to give Lisbon's body a break and put her on a ventilator for the rest of the night. Her lungs had taken a pretty good beating as she struggled to survive. There was definitely a risk of infection, so she was being pumped full of antibiotics. Unsurprisingly, she was also quite dehydrated.

"But," the man had said, "at this point in time, Agent Lisbon should recover, barring any unforeseen circumstances." He had paused for a second to let the good news sink in before his expression became serious once more. "There is a question of how long Agent Lisbon was without oxygen," he continued. "As I'm sure you know, the longer the brain is without it, the more…tricky recovery becomes."

Jane knew he wasn't talking about the physical aspect of healing. No, he was worried about Lisbon's mental state, if she would be able to speak or walk or if she would know who any of them were.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, tried to remember that he had heard Lisbon screaming minutes before they had pulled her out of what was supposed to be her grave. Clearly, she'd had air then. He just had to hope that they had been fast enough.

Unbelievably exhausted, he sank into a pleather chair, done in some hideous shade of orange, resting his head on one hand. This could be Kristina Frye all over again – alive from a biological standpoint only.

But it would be infinitely worse.

To never hear her call him out on his plans, never share a joke with her, for the person he had shared a decade of his life with to not remember it…there, but not there…

Around three in the morning, Rigsby and Cho showed up, both holding obscenely large cups of coffee. "Any news?" Rigsby asked, sitting beside Grace and draping an arm around her shoulders.

She shook her head. "We haven't been allowed in yet," she informed the other two. "Hopefully first thing in the morning." There was a collective sigh. "What about you guys?"

Cho caught his eye. "Brett Stiles and Sherriff McAllister have both been found." Jane waited, for clearly there was more to this statement. "It looks like a double suicide, but there'll be an autopsy in the morning."

He ran a hand down his face.

"Rosalind Harker was also found shot to death in her room," Cho went on, and Jane felt a pang of remorse for the woman. Her only sin had been loving the wrong man, being unable to reconcile the person she had created in her mind with the serial killer that walked the earth.

He supposed he couldn't blame her for that.

"This whole thing is going to be a major shit storm," Rigsby added. "We've already talked to Bertram about four times tonight. He did seem genuinely concerned about Lisbon. Almost as concerned as he was about the media response."

"I hope his new press secretary is less of a nut job than his old one," Cho said, sitting and stretching his legs out in front of him.

More moments of contemplative silence. Then, "Jane?" Grace finally said. "Thoughts?"

He shook his head. "Not until Lisbon wakes up," he told them.

No one bothered to correct him and say _if_ she woke up.

Though he didn't think it was possible, he drifted off in the uncomfortable chair for a few hours. He woke to Cho tapping him on the shoulder. Jerking upright, he blinked rapidly, the room coming back into focus.

The doctor was standing in front of them again, and Jane could tell immediately from the man's body language that he had genuinely good news.

"Agent Lisbon woke up about an hour ago," he told them, smiling. "We took her for a CAT scan, and everything appears to be quite normal. She responded to our questions appropriately and seems able to move and think regularly. Before I came out here, we removed the ventilator, and she's breathing just fine on her own."

"Thank God," Grace whispered.

"There's still a massive risk for infection, given what she was exposed to, so I anticipate keeping her here for at least another day and night." He paused, looking around for questions. Finding none, he went on. "I know visiting hours don't start yet, but given what went on, I think we can bend the rules a little."

He led all four of them down the brightly lit hallway, past a sea of glass windows and beeping machines.

The blinds were closed in Lisbon's room, but the door was open.

Though she was still dirty and wan, she managed to give them all a small smile, her eyes lingering on Jane.

He perched on the edge of her bed, fingers seeking hers immediately. When she squeezed back, he was so overcome with emotion that he leaned down and kissed her fully on the lips, witnesses be damned.

She was here, she was alive, she was going to be fine.

He had won.

With a little more color in her cheeks, Lisbon turned her attention to the team. "The doctor told me a little of what went on," she said, voice a scratchy whisper. "Well done, all of you."

The team didn't stay for long; Jane suspected his unexpected display of affection towards Lisbon had startled them all properly. He didn't really care.

The moment they were alone, he kissed her again, trying to tell her without words what this meant to him. Softly, she touched his face.

"You need a shower," she told him quietly when they had separated a little.

"But that's much less fun without you," he teased. There was so much they should be talking about, but he found all he wanted to do was revel in this moment. He had thought he was going to lose her, and now, it was like he had managed to get another shot.

"Was Haffner really Red John?" she asked, serious now.

He sighed. "He might have been. Honestly, I haven't looked into it much yet."

She nodded, settling back against her pillows heavily, eyelids starting to flutter.

"Get some rest," he murmured, touching his lips to her forehead. "Being buried alive takes a lot out of you."

Something dark crossed her face, and he knew it would be a long road to recovery for Lisbon. The emotional trauma was likely to continue on for quite some time.

She squeezed his hand once more then relaxed, giving into the painkillers he assumed were still pumping through her system.

As he walked slowly out of her room, he wondered if it was possible, really and truly possible, to get on with his life now. Not do things in half-measures, waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the latest clue in a Red John murder case.

It seemed…impossibly simple, and yet, he found he wanted it more than he had wanted anything in a decade.

And, maybe, after so many years of guilt and anguish and dead ends, he was due a little luck.


	18. Chapter 18

**AN:** I meant to have this up yesterday, but I was thoroughly distracted by the Royal Baby. So sue me – I love the British Royal Family. Also – THEY STARTED FILMING SEASON 6 YESTERDAY, TOO!

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, folks! Dum dum dummmm! I'm estimating two chapters left in this particular story, and then we'll see where I go from there. I would definitely not look for another multichapter from me for a good long time, though.

Apologizes for the relatively short length of this one. However, if it didn't get posted today, it wasn't going to get posted until at least Thursday, and by then people were probably going to start throwing things in my general direction.

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Eighteen**

The dirt was back, seemingly tons of it, falling down heavily from the sky, drowning her. In the darkness, it felt like she was being consumed from all sides. There was nowhere that was safe, absolutely no haven that she could find.

She was frozen in place now, the earth preventing her from moving at all. This is where she would die, alone in a dark pit, slowly choking to death on dirt and fear. There was no escape, nothing left to do now but wait.

The dimness around her suddenly dissolved, and she sat up abruptly, head swimming. It was dark here too, but less oppressive, more like regular darkness. In a moment, she became aware of another presence.

Jane was on the edge of her bed, hands reaching out for her. When her heartbeat settled down, she heard her own name being repeated again and again.

"Lisbon," he murmured, voice soothing, quiet. "Lisbon, wake up."

She grabbed onto his fingers, her own grip tight. Her breathing was far too shallow and her overworked lungs started to burn. Jane leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers. "Settle down," he whispered. "It's all right now. It was just a dream."

Except it wasn't a dream. It had actually happened, a living nightmare come to pass.

Instinctively, she buried her fingers in his shirt, pulling him closer. He wrapped his arms around her, carefully avoiding her IV, and she turned her face into his neck, the scent of his cologne soothing.

"It's all right," he crooned again. "You're safe."

And, indeed, she did feel better, more at peace. She remembered his words from years ago: _I'm always going to save you, Lisbon_. He had come through for her again, though she had given up on him this last time. It was hard to keep the faith while you were suffocating.

Dimly, she hoped he would forgive her for her lapse.

Marshaling herself, she leaned back slightly, trying to straighten her shoulders. She had made it too far to fall to pieces. "What's going on out there?" she asked, nodding in the direction of the door. "Does anyone have any more news?"

"Nothing particularly noteworthy," Jane told her. "The last I heard, there were going to be autopsies scheduled for Stiles and McAllister, the idea being that we need to make sure their suicides were actually suicides."

She nodded. She had gone through the same process with Amanda Shaw after Tommy Volker had ordered the woman's death. Of course, Amanda Shaw _hadn't_ killed herself. She wondered what it meant if Stiles and McAllister were also murder victims.

"Anything on Haffner?" For that was what she was particularly concerned about. Had she really been to dinner on multiple occasions with the serial killer that had taken so many times? If she had been honest, she'd had the slightest of crushes on the man, too. He had been handsome, professional, someone she'd thought of as a true peer.

The thought made her suppress a shudder.

Jane studied her face for a moment, then spoke. "Nothing concrete. Cho and Rigsby are going through his place right now. No one else is allowed inside."

"I figured you'd be out there, too," she said, hoping she sounded casual.

His smile was warm, and his lips brushed her fingertips. "I have more important places to be at the moment," he told her, and despite the circumstances, she felt moisture pool in her eyes. For him to step aside at such a moment meant more to her than she could properly express, but she thought Jane probably understood.

However, as much as he understood about her, she understood a few things about him, too. "You need to go," she told him. "You've been waiting for this for ten years. There's no one else out there who is better qualified to know if this is the real thing. No one is going to be willing to move on if they don't have confirmation from you." She tried to keep her voice gentle, not wanting him to think that she was pushing him away.

His eyes held hers, and she saw something unexpected in them – fear. But of what, she wasn't certain. Surely it couldn't be for her – she was going to be fine. Maybe he was worried that Haffner wasn't Red John, that this wasn't all over. Or maybe he was worried that Haffner _was_ Red John, and it _was_ all over.

Practically speaking, Jane had devoted almost a quarter of his life to this moment. It had driven him, made him get out bed on the days when she was sure he would have rather simply ceased to exist. The culmination of this hunt had been foremost in his mind for a decade. If it was over, then what was his next step?

It was a difficult thing, having your life's work be suddenly over and having to move on.

But she hadn't been just giving Jane platitudes – he really did need to be there. He was the one who could sort all of this out, the one who could give everyone the answers they were so desperately seeking.

Carefully, she pressed her hand to his face. "Go," she whispered. "You know you need to."

He nodded. "I know." He kissed her palm, slowly rose to leave. "I'll be back as soon as I can." Pausing at the door, he turned back. "There are guards outside your door, people that I trust. You're not going to be alone, not until I know for certain, and probably not even then."

They had both known for years that Red John's influence ran deep, and it was folly to think that his whole organization would fall apart instantly after his death. There were probably contingency plans in place, revenge that was waiting to be had.

She just had to hope that Red John's minions weren't as smart as their leader and that they could remain a few crucial steps ahead of them. God knew they had a difficult enough of a time staying ahead of Red John himself.

With a deep, shaking sigh, she settled herself back against the pillows, pulling the thin hospital blankets closer.

She didn't sleep.

Once, she had read that love was when you couldn't sleep because reality was better than your dreams.

But what happened when reality was worse than your nightmares?

Every time she blinked, she felt the crushing pressure of the earth again, ready to pull her down into the depths.

It was a long night.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Ray Haffner's apartment didn't look particularly threatening – there was no poster of Satan on the wall, no menacing collection of knives displayed in the living room. The place was simple, furnished on a state agent's salary for many years, but there were a few pieces of furniture that suggested a recent uptick in income.

When Jane arrived, Cho and Rigsby were systematically going through the place drawer by drawer. They looked surprised to see him.

"Hey, man," Rigsby said, pausing in his examination of a hall closet. "Didn't think you'd be leaving the hospital."

He shrugged, looking disinterestedly through a small pile of magazines on the coffee table. _Visualize Weekly_, _Entrepreneur's Digest_. "Lisbon basically kicked me out and told me to do some work." He didn't add her reasons into his explanation.

"How's she doing?" Cho asked.

"Physically, she'll be just fine I think." She would probably be in the hospital for another day, still hooked up to an IV, but his crushing feeling of terror over her safety was starting to dissipate.

"And emotionally?" Rigsby added, having paid attention to Jane's wording.

He shrugged again. "She was buried alive. It's going to take her some time to get over that. She's already had a nightmare. I doubt it'll be her last."

Cho's phone rang. After a short minute, he hung up. "That was Van Pelt. She said she never would have picked up on this if she hadn't been looking for it, but Haffner has a storage unit rented near Elk Grove. He tried to mask his trail, but Van Pelt is better with computers than he was."

Something shivered down his spine, like a premonition. Hidden storage sheds were never good when they were dealing with serial killers. Almost as if he _was_ psychic, he knew they would find their proof there.

"Then let's go," Jane said. "Haffner didn't get away with being Red John for almost fifteen years by being careless. I doubt he was stupid enough to leave anything incriminating lying around."

They took separate cars on the journey to Elk Grove. Jane was grateful that no one wanted to ride with him; he needed the time to think.

So much had happened so fast that it was hard to process. Lisbon, Red John, Haffner, the suicides of Stiles and McAllister, Kirkland's murder. He hadn't had the opportunity to piece it all together properly.

At the moment, it looked like Haffner had killed Rosalind Harker. At least, the bullets they found in her body matched the ones that were fired from Haffner's gun. Personally, Jane would have expected something a little more dramatic, but perhaps time hadn't allowed for that.

The enclosure they had pulled Lisbon out of had looked to be fairly new, something that had just been installed. It bothered him very much to think of Haffner putting this in specifically so he could have a place to bury someone alive. Then again, he wasn't a serial killer.

It was late in the afternoon, sun starting to sink low behind him as he drove. Dimly, he wondered how much sleep the rest of the team had gotten. He himself had only dozed for a few hours, all of them in the chair beside Lisbon's bed. She had been moved out of ICU, which meant visiting hours were more relaxed. Of course, even if they hadn't been, he was quite convinced of his ability to not get himself kicked out.

Lisbon's sleep hadn't been particularly peaceful. He wasn't sure if it was physical pain or emotional trauma that was interrupting her rest, but either way, it certainly didn't appear to be pleasant. He just wanted to take her home.

But where was that? She hadn't spent the night in her apartment since Red John had broken in. His hotel room certainly wasn't much to brag about, nor was the one they had been staying at.

He suddenly felt adrift, no place to really go. It had been a long time since he had felt that way. Or, rather, it had been a long time since that fact had bothered him.

Grace had faxed the warrant over to the local police department, saving them some trouble. A young-looking officer was waiting for them at the entrance to the storage facility, the grumpy looking owner by his side. However, grumpy or no, a warrant was a warrant, and five minutes later, Rigsby was lifting the door open.

Naturally, there were no lights in the thing.

A cursory search revealed a great many boxes, all of them unlabeled. In the back corner, there was a locked safe, one that he didn't have the capacity to crack at the current time.

"All of this should come back to the CBI," he said to Rigsby, who nodded, phone already up to his ear.

He wanted something substantial, something concrete. Why weren't people considerate enough to leave damning evidence lying around, murder weapons and blood-stained clothes? Of course, if Haffner was Red John, they would find something.

Although she couldn't have known it, Lisbon was correct in her assessment of his fear. What was he going to do with his life now? As horrible as it was to think it, life had been more orderly with Red John in it. He'd had one purpose – to take the man out. Not that he would wish Red John back, far from it, but he had suddenly lost his reason for being.

Absently, he checked his phone. Nothing from Lisbon.

Perhaps it was time to find a new reason for life.

Suddenly, he needed to see her again. He had spent so long trying to protect her from what had happened anyway that it was a shocking thing to his system. To have almost lost her…the one person he had tried so hard to save…

He made a sharp right turn, heading for the freeway. He knew what Lisbon wanted him to do, the answers she wanted him to find, but he had discovered abruptly that _he_ wanted _her_ more than that.

It was fully dark by the time he arrived at the hospital, the floodlights giving everything a surreal glare. To his surprise, Lisbon wasn't asleep. He figured she would be so gone on painkillers that she'd be passed out like a baby.

One look told him that she was fighting sleep for all she was worth. It didn't take a genius to understand why. Even so, the shadows under her eyes were pronounced, lashes drooping.

She smiled warmly at him though, and he returned the gesture. Briefly, he told her of the new developments in the case as he shed his jacket. He knew she had expected more, had expected definitive conclusions. They would get there, but just not today.

"Scoot," he murmured quietly, nudging her to one side of the bed and climbing in.

Surprised but obviously pleased, she went willingly into his open arms. Subtly, under the guise of adjusting his hold, he pressed the button for the morphine drip. She needed to sleep, and he was going to make sure she got some. Without arrogance, he knew that his presence would help, but drugs definitely wouldn't go amiss either.

Lisbon rolled to her side, burying her face in his chest, and he softly brushed an errant strand of hair out of the way. At some point, she had managed to get up and shower during the day, and he was pleased to see no traces of dust on her ivory skin.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. There was a moment when he felt compelled to tell her how much he loved her, but he heard her soft exhalation against his shirtfront, and he let it pass.

There would be plenty of time for that later.

Hopefully about forty years-worth.


	19. Chapter 19

**AN:** This is THE END, folks! Thanks for sticking with me…this is definitely the longest story I've written, and I apologize for the several centuries it took me to do so!

I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to leave me a review – I really appreciate it more than I can express. You guys truly inspire me, and I couldn't do this without your support.

A note about this chapter – yes, this really is it. If there are unanswered questions…well, maybe I left them unanswered on purpose ;) You never know what I'm planning next…

**The Art of Sanctuary**

**Chapter Nineteen**

Two days later, Lisbon was released from the hospital. There was still a chance that she could develop an infection, so Jane made a stop at a nearby pharmacy to fill a prescription for some heavy-duty antibiotics.

Her lungs were still sore, as was the rest of her body, but she suspected that a few days of _not_ being an inpatient would do wonders for her.

Of course, the question was…where was she going to go?

She hadn't slept in her apartment since the night Red John had broken in to it. There was always the option of another hotel, but she was tired of feeling like a gypsy, no place to call home.

And Red John was dead now. Perhaps it was time to face her lingering fears, or at least learn to deal with them until she could make other, more permanent arrangements.

Jane made no comment when she told him where she wanted to go, just simply turned the Citroen's wheel smoothly to the left. However, his startled blink told her that he was indeed, quite surprised.

To her _own_ surprise, there was a heady sense of relief when she unlocked the front door to the apartment she had called home for the past five years or so. Her things were here, her memories. She slept in the bed upstairs and drank coffee in _this_ kitchen.

Given everything that had happened since the last time she walked out the door, the feeling of homecoming far outweighed everything else.

She breathed in deeply in the living room, ignoring the slight protest of her lungs. The place smelled a little stale, like she needed to take the trash out. Well, that wasn't exactly welcoming. She turned on the wax warmer Grace had gotten her last Christmas, hoping the aroma of vanilla and cinnamon would bury the other, more unpleasant odors before long.

Behind her, Jane sat the plastic hospital bag containing her possessions on the counter, then reached into a cupboard for a glass.

"Here," he said, filling it with water and handing it to her before digging for her prescription pills. "I promised the team I was going to take care of you, and I'm pretty sure Cho will break my arms if I don't."

With a small smile, she took the medicine, wondering absently what her co-workers thought about her current situation with Jane. At this point, a blind person had to know they were together. Together-ish. Or something.

It was a conversation they needed to have, and, considering everything, should probably have soon.

But as Jane shrugged off his jacket and rolled his sleeves up, moving around her apartment comfortably, she found she didn't want to disrupt the atmosphere. She had wanted this for a very long time, and wasn't there some old saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth? Not that Jane was horse, although he _had _gotten her a pony once…

Forcefully, she marshaled her brain. She hadn't slept a great deal in the past week, and her mind had started taking some outlandish twists.

To her dismay, she kept waking up with nightmares, so vivid that she was often afraid to close her eyes in the first place. Jane had interfered, knowing that her body physically needed the time off, and she had found herself swallowing sleeping pills, too. In her opinion, the only thing they had done was force her to have the terrifying dreams.

Waking up next to Jane was a small consolation. His arms and quiet whispers were comforting, his warmth wrapping around her like a familiar quilt. If anyone knew about recurring nightmares, it would be him, and there was some solidarity in that.

She was hoping that with time she would get over it. Well, perhaps get over it was a bit much to expect. She just wanted to be able to close her eyes and sleep without visions that would send a weaker person sobbing into a corner.

Almost awkwardly, she stood in her tiny kitchen, wondering what she should be doing now. Jane's phone rang, and he studied the number on the screen for just a second before answering.

"Yeah?" he said, glancing absently out the window. Then his attention focused. "Finally? It's about damn time." He turned his attention towards her, expression considering. "No, I think I should probably be there. An hour? Sounds good." There was a pause as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. "No, we're at her apartment. Just walked in the door, actually. Alright, I'll see you soon."

He flipped the phone shut then offered her a tight smile. "That was Cho. We finally get Haffner's safe back."

It had been utterly unexpected, but they had run into some massive red tape when they tried to get Haffner's safe unlocked. Jane had told her that it was probably some of the last vestiges of Red John's power and influence. Even in death, he was figuring out how to thwart them.

However, Bertram had leaned very heavily on a few folks, calling in some long-owed favors. Apparently, it had worked. She wondered if Bertram had figured out he was a Red John suspect, then shook her head. Obviously, he knew he had been a suspect before, back when that whole mess with O'Laughlin and Hightower happened.

"And you're going in to see what's in it." It wasn't a question, and it wasn't said with any inflection. If anyone should be there, it would be Jane. Besides, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the safe contained something cryptic and bizarre. She doubted it would be as simple as them discovering a list entitled "People I've Killed."

Jane sighed. "I think it's a necessary step in figuring this whole damn puzzle out. I'm not sure what's going to be in there, but whatever it is, it's going to be important."

She nodded her understanding, but Jane still looked concerned. "Are you going to be alright while I'm gone?"

"Of course," she said automatically. It was probably even true. As long as she didn't attempt to sleep, she would be perfectly fine. With her eyes open, there was no threat of crushing earth, and she was still confident in her ability to deal with any other sort of threat.

Jane took a long look at her face, and she knew he was trying to analyze the truth of her words. "Fine," he eventually murmured, moving closer and taking her into his arms. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he whispered into her hair.

"Take your time," she said, fingers trailing over the back of his vest. "I'll be just fine."

Almost regretfully, he kissed her. He lingered long enough to increase her heart rate, his incredibly talented lips effectively awakening all of her nerve endings. Just when she was considering ripping the buttons off of his shirt, he pulled away, his color a little high.

"Call if you need anything," he instructed, and then he was gone.

She spent the next hour or so doing all of the housekeeping chores that had been ignored since she had last been here. She changed her sheets, took out the trash, dutifully dusted and then vacuumed. While she was cleaning the bathroom, she found her abandoned wine glass from the night Jane had decided she needed some intensive relaxation.

In that moment, she knew she was really and truly alright with being in this place. There were definitely far more happy memories than not. The bathtub, her couch during a thunderstorm…yes, those all meant more than one night of disruption. Pleased with herself, she curled up in the recliner, intent on watching some terrible reality television, the sort of stuff she would deny ever seeing until the day she died.

And then…she waited.

XxXxXxXxXxXxX

Haffner's entire storage unit had been sealed off, both with literal crime scene tape and proverbial red tape three days ago. Jane had meant what he told Lisbon – there was probably some sort of protocol in place if Haffner died, some sniveling minion who was required to put a particular series of events in motion.

It would be foolish to forget that Red John was immensely powerful, more so than Jane had probably even figured out, and that, even in death, there were people who were more than willing to protect him.

Bertram had come through in the end for them, though, and Jane felt a twinge of regret for having put the man on his suspect list in the first place. But, hell, he would have put Cho on the list if he would have fit the criteria.

There were already a couple of CBI vehicles parked at the scene when he arrived, along with a white van bearing the name of a local locksmith company.

Portable flood lights had been set up around the unit, their bright glow illuminating the whole area in a sterile fashion.

Cho was standing off to the left, arms crossed, supervising the work on the safe. The locksmith appeared rather nervous about the close scrutiny, glancing up occasionally at the stoic agent. It made Jane smile a little.

Rigsby was at the other end of the storage unit, flipping through boxes and filing cabinets, occasionally putting something aside for a closer look when time permitted. Jane wondered what sort of damning stuff was contained here, what sort of picture they would emerge with.

And then he wondered when this would be over, when he would be free to go back to Lisbon. He was thinking in both the short and long term. Until they knew for certain, part of him would belong to the serial killer, the part that could go a week without rest and could remember the names of everyone he had shaken hands with in ten years. Part of him would always be sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his old room in Malibu, a bloodstained face his only company.

It was strange that it had taken him ten years to really and truly _want_ to move on. Lisbon had been by his side for most of that time; what would have happened if Red John would have gone for her sooner? Distractedly, he shook his head. It hardly mattered now.

From across the room, there was a sudden crashing sound, and an entire wall of shelving came tumbling to the ground, boxes spilling open, their contents scattering everywhere. Jane noted that every single state agent had already pulled their weapon. _Cowboys_, he thought, this time with amusement.

"Sorry, guys!" Almost sheepishly, an agent that Jane vaguely recognized stepped from behind the toppled shelves. "Apparently these weren't exactly high quality." He toed the broken pieces of metal gingerly.

"Um, Agent Cho?" came a timid voice. "I got the safe open."

Immediately, Jane focused his attention in front of him. Sure enough, the heavy door was open, though he couldn't tell from this angle what was in it.

Ignoring the rest of the activity in the shed, Jane knelt as the locksmith shuffled eagerly away, no doubt anxious to get away from Cho's icy stare.

There was nothing in the safe that he could see except for a rather small box. It looked like something to keep index cards in.

Frowning, he reached for it, realizing but not caring that he was about to piss the forensics people off mightily with his lack of gloves. Slowly, he pulled the lid off.

It was a collection of photographs, he realized, all instant Polaroids, even in this modern age. And on every picture was a red painted face, leering at him.

There was something very familiar about the backgrounds he saw, but it wasn't until he was almost through the stack that he realized what it was. He recognized the bedframe that used to be in his room. These were all photographs of Red John's calling card.

A brief shiver touched him. He had studied every case file that Red John had been connected with, knew every piece of information there was to be had, remembered every single detail that he could glean from between the covers of those brown folders.

These pictures were not crime scene photographs. They had been taken by someone else.

Rapidly, he sorted through them again, finding Eileen Barlow's hotel room. The small portion of the window he could see in the frame told him it was night at the time it was taken. However, he knew the maid hadn't found the body until the next morning, full daylight.

If Haffner was still alive, this would be more than enough to get him the death penalty. However, for Jane, it was more than enough to convince him that Haffner had indeed been Red John. He very much doubted that a mere disciple would have access to these sorts of pictures, that Red John would have let someone else come along and watch.

Standing, he handed the box to Cho, who was prepared enough to already be wearing latex gloves. "I'm assuming that's going to be enough to convince the general public." He said nothing else, but walked out, suddenly desperate to get some fresh air.

It was the middle of the afternoon. He had been away from Lisbon for almost five hours, and it would be six before he made it back to her. Still, he took a few moments to rest his forehead against the steering wheel of the Citroen, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Over, it was all over.

There was something impossibly difficult to accept about that statement. His life's work had culminated in this, and now what did he have to show for it? Where was the great feeling of revenge and justice and unburdening?

He simply felt tired, like an old man. Then again, he was headed in that direction whether he was willing to admit it or not.

The ends of this story were not tying themselves neatly up, as he had imagined they would. Had _needed_ them to.

But there hadn't been any huge revelation; hell, he hadn't even managed to figure out that it _was_ Haffner until that awful night he had dug Lisbon out of what was supposed to be her grave.

Traffic was beginning to back up as he made his way back to Sacramento proper, blindly following the route that would take him to Lisbon's door.

She opened a few seconds after he knocked, dressed in sweats and a Kings t-shirt. And she just looked so soft, so inviting that he leaned forward and rested his head on her shoulder, still standing in the doorway.

After a moment of surprise, she slid a hand into his hair, her touch beyond soothing.

"Tell me how to move on," he whispered. "I _can_ now. I _want_ to. But I feel like something is holding me back."

Her other hand grabbed a fistful of his shirt. "We'll figure it out," she murmured, and even in the state he was in, he noted the use of the word _we_. "Trust me."

He breathed in deeply, the perfume from her body wash acting like a panacea. It made him feel like they _would_ be able to sort it out, that he _could_ have a life.

A life with her.

His embrace became abruptly tighter, almost desperate.

He had her now, and he wasn't going to let go.

XxXxXxXxXxXxX

In a luxurious apartment several miles away, a man settled into his favorite chair with a cup of steaming tea.

The past few days had been nothing but upheaval, and he was very much looking forward to relaxing for what remained for the day. There was an unopened box on his kitchen table, one that had been pulled from the safe just that day. It was a wonderful stroke of luck, the CBI calling that particular locksmith, though he knew luck had absolutely nothing to do with it. All it took was one little distraction and no one would ever know what happened.

His back gave a twinge as he shifted slightly, reminding him that he wasn't nearly as young now as he was when he started this.

Perhaps retirement would do him some good. Perhaps he could get used to a perpetual state of leisure.

Absently, he watched the evening news as it aired. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the top story of the night would be.

But, ah, the things those news anchors were saying. Their choices in adjectives were quite disturbing.

He frowned, considering. Perhaps his retirement would only be _semi _-permanent.

A few muscle aches were a small price to pay.

And he could just imagine the look on Patrick Jane's face.

Slowly, the man smiled, the grin broad, his eyes crinkling at the corners until they were almost slits.

Perhaps he could still paint a few more self-portraits.


End file.
